For Whom The Bell Tolls

PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS
1066

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in 1898 at Oak Park, a
highly respectable suburb of Chicago, where his father,
a keen sportsman, was a doctor. He was the second of six
children. The family spent holidays in a lakeside hunting
lodge in Michigan, near Indian settlements* Although
highly energetic and successful in all school activities, Ernest
twice ran away from home before joining the Kansas City
Star as a cub reporter in 1917. Next year he volunteered as
an ambulance driver on the Italian front and was badly
wounded, but served for the last few weeks of the war
in the Italian infantry. Returning to America he began to
write features for the Toronto Star Weekly in 1919 and was
married in 1921. That year he came to Europe as a roving
correspondent and covered several large conferences. In
France he came into contact with Gertrude Stein - later they
quarrelled - Ezra Pound, and James Joyce. He covered the
Greco— Turkish war in 1922. Three Stories and Ten Poems
was given a limited publication in Paris in 1923. Thereafter
he gradually took to a life of bull-fighting, big-game hunt-
ing, and deep-sea fishing, visiting Spain during the Civil
War. Latterly he lived mosdy in Cuba and died in July
1961. His best-known books were A Farewell to Arms
(1929), Death in the Afternoon (1932), For Whom the Bell
Tolls (1940), and The Old Man and the Sea (1952)* In 1954
he was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature. Ernest
Hemingway had three sons.

Cover drawing by Paid Hogmrth

FOR WHOM
THE BELL TOLLS

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

No man is an Hand, in tire of it
selfe ; every man is a peece of the
Continent , a part of the mame ; if a
Clod bee washed away by the Sea,
Europe is the lesse, as well as if a
Promontcrie were, as well as if a
Manner of thy friends or of tome
ovine were ; any mans death dimin-
ishes ms, because I am involved
in Mankinds ; And therefore never
send to know for whom the bell
tolls ; It tolls for thee

JOHN DONNE

Penguin Books Ltd, Harmon dsworth , Middlesex
AUSTRALIA ; Penguin. Books Pty Ltd, y 6 z Whitehorse Road,
Mitcham, Victoria

First published 1941
Published in Penguin Books 1955
Reprinted 1956, 1957, 195S, i960, 1961, 1963, 1963

Copyright © the Estate of Ernest Hemingway, 1941

Made and printed in Great Britain
by Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd
Aylesbury and Slough
Set in Linotype Granjon

This book is for
MARTHA GELLHORN

This book is sold subject to the condition
that it shall not, by way of trade, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise disposed
of without the publisher's consent,
in any form of binding or cover
other than that in Which
it is published

CHAPTER I

He lay flat on the brown, pine-needle floor of the forest, his chin
on his folded arms, and high overhead the vvir.>_ blew in the tops
of the pine trees. The mountainside sloped gently where he la} ;
but below it was steep and he could see the dark of the oiled road
winding through the pass. There was a stream alongside the road
and tar down the pass he saw a mill beside the stream and the
falling water of the dam, white in the summer sunlight,

‘Is that the mill?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I do not remember it.’

‘It was built since you were here. The old mill is farther down;
much below' the pass.’

He spread the photostated military map out on the forest floor
and looked at it carefully. The old man looked over his shoulder.
He was a short and solid old man in a black peasant’s smock and
grey iron-stiff trousers and he wore rope- soled shoes. He was
breathing heavily from the climb and his hand rested on one of
the two heavy packs they had been carrying.

‘Then you cannot see the bridge from here?’

‘No,’ the old man said. ‘This is the easy country of the pass
where the stream flows gently. Below, where the road turns out
of sight in the trees, it drops suddenly and there is a steep gorge

‘I remember.’

‘Across the gorge is the bridge.’

‘And where are their posts?’

‘There is a post at the mill that you see there.’

The young man, who was studying the country; took his glasses
from the pocket of his faded, khaki flannel shirt, wiped the lenses
with a handkerchief, screwed the eyepieces around until theboards
of the mill showed suddenly clearly and he saw the wooden bench
beside the door; the huge pile of sawdust that rose behind the
open shed where the circular ’saw was, and a stretch of the flume
that brought the logs down from the mountainside on the other
bank of the stream. The stream showed clear and smooth-looking

5

in the glasses and, below the curl o£ the falling water, the spray
from the darn was blowing in the wind.

“There is no sentry. 5

‘There is smoke coming from the millhouse, 5 the old man said.
‘There are also clothes hanging on a line. 5
‘1 see them, but I do not see any sentry. 5

“Perhaps he is in the shade, 5 the old man explained. ‘It is hot
there now. He would be in the shadow at the end we do not
see. 5 1

‘Probably. Where is the next post? 5

‘Below the bridge. It is at the roadmender’s hut at kilometre
five from the top of the pass.’

‘How many men are here? 5 He pointed at the mill.

‘Perhaps four and a corporal. 5
‘And below? 5
‘More. I will find out. 5
‘And at the bridge? 5
‘Always two. One at each end. 5

‘We will need a certain number of men, 5 he said. ‘How many
men can you get? 5

‘I can bring as many men as you wash, 5 the old man said.
‘There are many men now here in the hills. 5
‘How many? 5

‘There are more than a hundred. But they are in small bands.
How many men will you need? 5
‘I will let you know when we have studied the bridge. 5
‘Do you wish to study it now ? 5

‘No. Now I wash to go to where we will hide this explosive until
it is time. I would like to have it hidden in utmost security at a dis-
tance no greater than half an hour from the bridge, if that is
possible.’

‘That is simple, 5 the old man said. ‘From where we are going it
will all be downhill to the bridge. But now we must climb a little
in seriousness to get there. Are you hungry ? 5

Wes, 5 the young man said. ‘But we will eat later. How are you
called? I have forgotten. 5 It was a bad sign to him that he had
forgotten.

Anselmo, the old man said. I am called Anseimo and I come
from Barco de Avila, Let me help you with that pack, 5
The young man, who was tall and thin, with sun-streaked fair
6

hair, and a wind- and sun -burned face, who wore the sun-faded
flannel shirt, a pair of peasant’s trousers and rope-soled shoes,
leaned over, put his arm through one of the leather pack straps
and swung the heavy pack up on to his shoulders. He vt orked his
arm through the other strap and settled the weight of the pack
against his back. His shirt was still wet from where the pack had
rested.

’I have it up now,’ he said. ‘How do we go? ’

‘We climb,’ Anselmo laid.

Bending under the weight of the packs, sweating, they climbed
steadily in the pine forest that covered the mountainside. There
was no trail that the young man could see, but they were working
up and around the face of the mountain and now they crossed a
small stream and the old man went steadily on ahead up the edge
of the rocky stream bed. The climbing row was steeper and'more
difficult, until finally the stream seemed to drop down over the
edge of a smooth granite ledge that rose above them and the old
man waited at the foot of the ledge tor the voung man to come
up to him.

‘How are you making it ?5

‘All right , 5 the young man said. He was sweating heavily and
his thigh muscles were twitchy from the steepness of the climb.

‘Wait here now for me. I go ahead to warn them. You do not
want to be shot at carrying that stuff.’

‘Not even in a joke , 5 the young man said. ‘Is it far?*

‘It is very close. How do they call thee ? 5

‘Roberto , 5 the young man answered. He had slipped the pack
off and lowered it gently down between two boulders by the
stream bed.

‘Wait here, then, Roberto, and I will return for you.’

‘Good , 5 the young man said. ‘But do you plan to go down this
way to the bridge? ’

‘No, When we go to the bridge it will be by another way.
Shorter and easier.’

‘I do not want this material to be stored too far from the bridge . 5

‘You will see. If you are not satisfied, we will take another place . 5

‘We will see , 5 the young man said.

He sat by the packs and watched the old man climb the ledge.
It was not hard to climb and from the way he found hand-holds
without searching for them the young man could see that he had

7

climbed it many times before. Yet whoever was above had been
very careful not to leave any trail.

The young man, whose name was Robert Jordan, was ex-
tremely hungry and he was worried. He was often hungry but he
was not usually worried because he did not give any importance
to what happened to himself and he knew from experience how
simple it was to move behind the enemy lines in all this country.
It was as simple to move behind them as it was to cross through
them., if you had a good guide. It was only giving importance to
what happened to you if you were caught that made it difficult;
that and deciding whom to trust. You had to trust the people you
worked with completely or not at all, and you had to make
decisions about the trusting. He was not worried about any of
that. But there were other things.

This Anselmo had been a good guide and he could travel won-
derfully in the mountains. Robert Jordan could walk well enough
himself and he knew from following him since before daylight
that the old man could walk him to death. Robert Jordan trusted
the man, Anselmo, so far, in everything except judgement. He
had not yet had an opportunity to test his judgement, and, any-
way, the judgement was his own responsibility. No, he did not
worry about Anselmo, and the problem of the bridge was no more
difficult than many other problems. He knew how to blow any
sort of bridge that you could name and he had blown them of all
sizes and constructions. There was enough explosive and all
equipment in the two packs to blow this bridge properly even if
it were twice as big as Anselmo reported it, as he remembered it
when he had walked over it on his way to La Granja on a walk-
ing trip in 1933, and as Golz had read him the description of it
the night before last in that upstairs room in the house outside of
the Escorial.

‘To blow the bridge is nothing,’ Golz had said, the lamplight
on his scarred, shaved head, pointing with a pencil on the big
map. ‘You understand?’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘Absolutely nothing. Merely to blow the bridge is a failure.’

‘Yes, Comrade General/

‘To blow the bridge at a stated hour based on the time set for
the attack is how it should be done. You see that naturally. That
is you right and how it should be done/

Golz looked at the pencil, then tapped his teeth with it.

Robert Jordan had said nothing.

4 You understand that is your right and how it should be done,’
Golz went on, looking at him and nodding hi? head. He tapped
on the map now with the pencil. “That is how I should do it. That
is what we cannot have.’

4 Why, Comrade General?’

‘Why?* Golz said angrily. "How many attacks have you c tc n
and you ask me why : What is to guarantee that my orders are not
changed? What is to guarantee that the attack is not annulled?
What is to guarantee that the attack is not postponed? What is to
guarantee that it starts within six hours of when it should start?
Has any attack ever been as it should ? ’

‘It will start on time if it is your attack, 3 Robert Jordan said.

‘They are never my attacks,’ Golz said. T make them. Rut they
are not mine. The artillery is not mine. I must put in for it. I have
never been given what I ask for even when they have it to give.
That is the least of it. There are other things. You know how
those people are. It is not necessary to go into ail of it. Always
there is something. Always someone will interfere. So now be
sure you understand.’

‘So when is the bridge to be blown?’ Robert Jordan had
asked.

‘After the attack starts. As soon as the attack has started and
not before. So that no reinforcements will come up over that
road.’ He pointed with his pencil. ‘1 must know that nothing will
come up over that road.’

‘And when is the attack?’

‘I wall tell you. But you are to use the date and hour only as an
indication of a probability. You must be ready for that time. You
will blow the bridge after the attack has started. You see?’ he
indicated with the pencil. ‘That is the only road on which they
can bring up reinforcements. That is the only road on which they
can get up tanks, or artillery, or even move a truck toward the
pass which I attack. I must know that bridge is gone. Not before,
so it can be repaired if the attack is postponed. No. It must go
when the attack starts and I must know it is gone. There are only
two sentries. The man who will go with you has just come from
there. He is a very 'reliable man, they say. You will see. He has
people in the mountains. Get as many men as you need. Use as

9

few as possible, but use enough. I do not have to tell you these
things.’

‘A nd how do I determine that the attack has started?’

4 It is to be made with a full division. There will be aerial bom-
bardment as preparation. You are not deaf, are you?’

'Then I may take it that when the planes unload, the attack has
started ? 5

'You could not always take it like that , 5 Golz said and shook
his head. “But in this case, you may. It is my attack . 5

'I understand it , 5 Robert Jordan had said. ‘I do not say I like it
very much . 5

‘Neither do I like it very much. If you do not want to undertake
it, say so now. If you think you cannot do it, say so now . 5

‘I will do it , 5 Robert Jordan had said. ‘I will do it all right . 5

‘That is all I have to know , 5 Golz said. ‘That nothing comes up
over that bridge. That is absolute . 5

‘I understand . 5

‘I do not like to ask people to do such things and in such a way , 5
Golz went on. ‘I could not order you to do it. I understand what
you may be forced to do through my putting such conditions. I
explain very carefully so that you understand and that you under-
stand all of the possible difficulties and the importance . 5

‘And how will you advance on La Granja if that bridge is
blown ? 5

‘We go forward prepared to repair it after we have stormed the
pass. It is a very complicated and beautiful operation. As com-
plicated and as beautiful as always. The plan has been manu-
factured in Madrid. It is another of Vicente Rojo, the unsuccessful
professor’s masterpieces. I make the attack and I make it, as
always, not in sufficient force. It is a very possible operation, in
spite of that. I am much happier about it than usual. It can be suc-
cessful with that bridge eliminated. We can take Segovia. Look,
I show you how it goes. You see? It is not the top of the pass
where we attack. We hold that. It is much beyond. Look - Here -
Like this - 5 *

‘I would rather not know , 5 Robert Jordan said.

‘Good , 5 said Golz, ‘It is less of baggage to carry with you on the
other side, yes ? 5

‘I would always rather not know. Then, lio matter what can
happen, it was not me that talked . 5

10

‘I?, is better not to know,’ Golz stroked his forehead with the
pencil. ‘Many times I wish I did not know my ,ek\ But you do
know the one thing you must know about the bridge?’

‘Yes. I know' that.’

‘I belies e you do,’ Golz said. ‘I will not make you any little
speech. Let us now base a drink. So much talking makes me very
thirsty, Comrade Hordan. You ha\e a funny name in Spanish,
Comrade Hordownd

‘Flow do you say Golz in Spanish. Comrade General?’

''Hot zed said Golz grinning, making the 'ound deep in his
throat as though hawking with a bad cold. ‘Hotze/ he croaked.
‘Comrade Heneral Khotze. If I had known, how they pronounced
Golz in Spanish I would pick me out a better name hetore I come
to war here. When I think I come to command a dh is ion and I
can pick out any name I want and I pick out Hotze. Heneral
Hotze. Now it is too late to change. How do you like partisan
work?’ It was the Russian term for guerrilla work behind the
lines.

‘Very much,’ Robert Jordan said. He grinned. ‘It is very
healthy in the open aird

‘I like it very much when I was your age, too/ Golz said. ‘They
tell me you blow bridges very well. Very scientific. It Is only hear-
say. I have never seen you do anything myself. Maybe nothing
e\er happens really. You really blow them? * He was teasing now.
‘Drink this.’ He handed the glass of Spanish brandy to Robert
Jordan. ‘You really blow them?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘You better not have any sometimes on this bridge. No, let us
not talk any more about this bridge. You understand enougf^now
about that bridge. We are very serious, so we can make very strong
jokes. Look, do you have many girls on the other side of the lines? ’

‘No, there is no time for girls.’

‘I do not agree. The more irregular the service, the more
irregular the life. You have very irregular service. Also you need
a haircut.’

‘I have my hair cut as it needs it,’ Robert Jordan said. He would
be damned if he would have his head shaved like Golz. ‘I have
enough to think about without girls,’ he said sullenly.

‘What sort of uniform am I supposed to wear?’ Robert Jordan
asked.

‘None/ Golz said. ‘Your haircut is all right. I tease you. You
are very different from me,’ Golz had said and filled up the
glasses again.

‘You never think about only girls. I never think at all. Why
should I? I am General Sovietique . I never think. Do not try to
trap me into thinking.’

Someone on his staff, sitting.on a chair working over a map on -
a drawing board, growled at him in the language Robert Jordan
did not understand.

‘Shut up/ Golz had said, in English. ‘I joke if I want. I am so
serious is why I can joke. Now drink this and then go. You under-
stand, huh?’

‘Yes/ Robert Jordan had said. ‘I understand.’

They had shaken hands and he had saluted and gone out to
the staff car where the old man was waiting asleep and in that car
they had ridden over the road past Guadarrama, the old man still
asleep, and up the Navacerrada road to the Alpine Club hut
where he, Robert Jordan, slept for three hours before they started.

That was the last he had seen of Golz with his strange white
face that never tanned, his hawk eyes, the big nose and thin lips
and the shaven head crossed with wrinkles and with scars. To-
morrow night they would be outside the Escorial in the dark
along the road; the long lines of trucks loading the infantry in
the darkness; the men, heavy loaded, climbing up into the trucks;
the machine-gun sections lifting their guns into the trucks; the
tanks being run up on the skids on to the long-bodied tank trucks;
pulling the Division out to move them in the night for the attack
on the pass. He would not think about that. That was not his
business. That was Golz’s business. He had only one thing to do
and that was what he should think about and he must think it
out clearly and take everything as it came along, and not worry.
To worry was as bad as tohe afraid. It simply made things more
difficult.

He sat now by the stream watching the clear water flowing be-
tween the rocks and, across the stream, he noticed there was a
thick bed of watercress. He crossed the stream, picked a double
handful, washed the muddy roots clean in the current and then
sat down again beside his pack and ate the clean, cool green leaves
and the crisp, peppery-tasting stalks. He knelt by the stream and,
pushing his automatic pistol around on his belt to the small of

his back so that it would not be wet, he lowered himself with a
hand on each of two boulders and drank from the stream. The
water was achingly cold.

Pushing himself up on his hands he turned his head and saw
the old man coming down the ledge. With him was another man,
also in a black peasant’s smock and the dark grey trousers that
were almost a uniform in that province, wearing rope-soled shoes
and with a carbine slung over his back. This man was bareheaded.
The two of them came scrambling down the rock like goats.

They came up to him and Robert Jordan got to his feet.

‘ Salud , C amar ada> he said to the man with the carbine and
smiled.

‘ Salud ,’ the other said, grudgingly. Robert Jordan looked at
the man’s heavy, beard-stubbled face. It was almost round and
his head was round and set close on his shoulders. His eyes were
small and set too wide apart and his ears were small and set close
to his head. He was a heavy man about five feet ten inches tall and
his hands and feet were large. His nose had been broken and his
mouth was cut at one corner and the line of the scar across the
upper lip and lower jaw showed through the growth of beard
over his face.

The old man nodded his head at this man and smiled.

‘He is the boss here,’ he grinned, then flexed his arms as though
to make the muscles stand out and looked at the man with the
carbine in half-mocking admiration. ‘A very strong man.’

‘I can see it,’ Robert Jordan said and smiled again. He did not
like the look of this man and inside himself he was not smiling at
all.

‘What have you to justify your identity?’ asked the man with
the carbine.

Robert Jordan unpinned a safety pin that ran through his
pocket flap and took a folded paper out of the left breast pocket of
his flannel shirt and handed it to the man, who opened it, looked
at it doubtfully, and turned it in his hands.

So he cannot read, Robert Jordan noted.

‘Look at the seal,’ he said.

The old man pointed to the seal and the man with the carbine
studied it, turning it in his fingers.

‘What seal is that?’

‘Have you never seen it?’

‘No/

‘There are two/ said Robert Jordan. ‘One is the service

o£ the military intelligence. The other is the General Staff/

‘Yes, I have seen that seal before. But here no one commands
but me/ the other said sullenly. ‘What have you in the packs?’

‘Dynamite/ the old man said proudly. ‘Last night we crossed
the lines in the dark and all day we have carried this dynamite
over the mountain/

‘I can use dynamite/ said the man with the carbine. He handed
back the paper to Robert Jordan and looked him over. ‘Yes. I
have use for dynamite. How much have you brought me?’

‘I have brought you no dynamite/ Robert Jordan said to him
evenly. ‘The dynamite is for another purpose. What is your
name?’

‘What is that to you ? ’

‘He is Pablo/ said the old man. The man with the carbine
looked at them both sullenly,

‘Good. I have heard much good of you/ said Robert Jordan.

‘What have you heard of me?’ asked Pablo.

‘I have heard that you are an excellent guerrilla leader, that you
are loyal to the republic and prove your loyalty through your acts,
and that you are a man both serious and valiant. I bring you
greetings from the General Staff/

‘Where did you hear all this?’ asked Pablo. Robert Jordan
registered that he was not taking any of the flattery.

‘I heard it from Buitrago to the Escorial/ he said, naming all
the stretch of country on the other side of the lines.

‘I know no one in Buitrago nor in Escorial/ Pablo told him.

‘T^iere are many people on the other side of the mountains who
were not there before. Where are you from ? ’

‘Avila. What are you going to do with the dynamite?’

‘Blow up a bridge.’

‘What bridge?’

‘That is my business/

‘If it is in this territory, it is my business. You cannot blow
bridges close to where you live. You must live in one place and
operate in another. I know my business. One who is alive, now,
after a year, knows his business/

‘This is my business/ Robert Jordan said. ‘We can discuss it
together. Do you wish to help us with the sacks? ’

14

‘No,’ said Pablo and shook his head.

The old man turned toward him suddenly and spoke rapidly
and furiously in a dialect that Robert Jordan could just follow. It
was like reading Quevedo. Anselmo was speaking old Castilian
and it went something like this, ‘Art thou a brute? Yes. Art thou
a beast? Yes, many times. Hast thou a brain? Nay. None. Now
we come for something of consummate importance and thee,
with thy dwelling place to be undisturbed, puts thy fox-hole be-
fore the interests of humanity. Before the interests of thy people.
I this and that in the this and that of thy father. I this and that and
that in thy this. Pic\ up that bag. 9

Pablo looked down.

‘Every one has to do what he can do according to how it can be
truly done,’ he said. ‘I live here and I operate beyond Segovia. If
you make a disturbance here, we will be hunted out of these
mountains. It is only by doing nothing here that we are able to
live in these mountains. It is the principle of the fox/

‘Yes,’ said Anselmo bitterly. ‘It is the principle of the fox when
we need the wolf/

‘I am more wolf than thee,* Pablo said and Robert Jordan knew
that he would pick up the sack.

‘Hi. Ho . . .’ Anselmo looked at him. ‘Thou art more wolf than
me and I am sixty-eight years old.’

He spat on the ground and shook his head.

‘You have that many years?’ Robert Jordan asked, seeing that
now, for the moment, it would be all right and trying to make it
go easier.

‘Sixty-eight in the month of July/

‘If we should ever see that month,* said Pablo. ‘Let me help you
with the pack,* he said to Robert Jordan. ‘Leave the other to the
old man.* He spoke, not sullenly, but almost sadly now. ‘He is an
old man of great strength/

‘I will carry the pack,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘Nay, 5 said the old man. ‘Leave it to this other strong man/

‘I will take it,’ Pablo told him, and in his sullenness there was a
sadness that was disturbing to Robert Jordan. He knew that sad-
ness and to see it here worried him.

‘Give me the carbine, then,* he said, and when Pablo handed
it to him, he slung it over his back and, with the two men climb-
ing ahead of him, they went heavily, pulling and climbing up the

*5

granite shelf and over its upper edge to where there was a green
clearing in the forest.

They skirted the edge of the litde meadow and Robert Jordan,
striding easily now without the pack, the carbine pleasantly rigid
over his shoulder after the heavy, sweating pack weight, noticed
that the grass was cropped down in several places and signs that
picket pins had been driven into the earth. He could see a trail
through the grass where horses had been led to the stream to
drink and there was the fresh manure of several horses. They
picket them here to feed at night and keep them out of sight in
the timber in the daytime, he thought. I wonder how many horses
this Pablo has?

He remembered now noticing, without realizing it, that Pablo’s
trousers were worn soapy shiny in the knees and thighs. I wonder
if he has a pair of boots or if he rides in those alpargatas , he
thought. He must have quite an outfit. But I don’t like that sad-
ness, he thought. That sadness is bad. That’s the sadness they get
before they quit or before they betray. That is the sadness that
comes before the sell-out.

Ahead of them a horse whinnied in the timber and then,
through the brown trunks of the pine trees, only a little sunlight
coming down through their thick, almost-touching tops, he saw
the corral made by roping around the tree trunks. The horses had
their heads pointed toward the men as they approached, and at
the foot of a tree, outside the corral, the saddles were piled to-
gether and covered with a tarpaulin.

As they came up, the two men with the packs stopped, and
Robert Jordan knew it was for him to admire the horses.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They are beautiful.’ He turned to Pablo. ‘You
have your cavalry and all.’

There were five horses in the rope corral, three bays, a sorrel,
and a buckskin. Sorting them out carefully with his eyes after he
had seen them first together, Robert Jordan looked them over in-
dividually. Pablo and Anselmo knew how good they were and
while Pablo stood now proud and less sad-looking, watching them
lovingly, the old man acted as though they were some great sur-
prise that he had produced, suddenly, himself.

‘How do they look to you? ’ he asked.

‘All these I have taken,’ Pablo said and Robert Jordan was
pleased to hear him speak proudly.

16

‘That,* said Robert Jordan, pointing to one of the bays, a big
stallion with a white blaze on his forehead and a single white foot,
the near front, ‘is much horse.’

He was a beautiful horse that looked as though he had come
out of a painting by Velasquez.

‘They are all good,’ said Pablo. ‘You know horses?’

‘Yes.’

‘Less bad,’ said Pablo. ‘Do you see a defect in one of these?*

Robert Jordan knew that now his papers were being examined
by the man who could not read.

The horses all still had their heads up looking at the man.
Robert Jordan slipped through between the double rope of the
corral and slapped the buckskin on the haunch. He leaned back
against the ropes of the enclosure and watched the horses circle
the corral, stood watching them a minute more, as they stood still,
then leaned down and came out through the ropes.

‘The sorrel is lame in the off hind foot,’ he said to Pablo, not
looking at him. ‘The hoof is split and although it might not get
worse soon if shod properly, she could break down if she travels
over much hard ground.’

‘The hoof was like that when we took her,’ Pablo said.

‘The best horse that you have, the white-faced bay stallion, has
a swelling on the upper part of the cannon bone that I do not
like.’

‘It is nothing,’ said Pablo. ‘He knocked it three days ago. If it
were to be anything it would have become so already.’

He pulled back the tarpaulin and showed the saddles. There
were two ordinary vaquero’s or herdsman’s saddles, like Ameri-
can stock saddles, one very ornate vaquero’s saddle, with hand-
tooled leather and heavy, hooded stirrups, and two military sad-
dles in black leather.

‘We killed a pair of guardia civil ,’ he said, explaining the mili-
tary saddles.

‘That is big game.’

‘They had dismounted on the road between Segovia and Santa
Maria del Real. They had dismounted to ask papers of the driver
of a cart. We were able to kill them without injuring the horses.’

‘Have you killed many civil guards?’ Robert Jordan asked. •

‘Several,’ Pablo said. ‘But only these two without injury to the
horses.’

*7

‘It was Pablo who blew up the train at Arevalo.,’ Anselmo said.
‘That was Pablo.*

‘There was a foreigner with us who made the explosion,’ Pablo
said. e Do you know him?’

‘What is he called ? *

‘I do not remember. It was a very rare name.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘He was fair, as you are, but not as tall and with large hands and
a broken nose.’

‘Kashkin,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘That would be Kashkin.’

‘Yes,’ said Pablo. ‘It was a very rare name. Something like that.
What has become of him ? ’

‘He is dead since April.’

‘That is what happens to everybody,’ Pablo said, gloomily.
‘That is the way we will all finish. ’

‘That is the way all men end,’ Anselmo said. ‘That is the way
men have always ended. What is the matter with you, man?
What hast thou in the stomach?’

‘ They are very strong,’ Pablo said. It was as though he were
talking to himself. He looked at the horses gloomily. ‘You do not
realize how strong they are. I see them always stronger, always
better armed. Always with more material. Here am I with horses
like these. And what can I look forward to? To be hunted and to
die. Nothing more.’

‘You hunt as much as you are hunted,’ Anselmo said.

‘No,’ said Pablo. ‘Not any more. And if yve leave these moun-
tains now, where can we go? Answer me that. Where now?’

‘In Spain there are many mountains. There are the Sierra de
Gredos if one leaves here.’

‘Not for me,’ Pablo said. ‘I am tired of being hunted. Here we
are all right. Now if you blow a bridge here, we will be hunted.
If they know we are here and hunt for us with planes, they will
find us. If they send Moors to hunt us out, they will find us and
we must go. I am tired of all this. You hear?’ He turned to Robert
Jordan. ‘What right have you, a foreigner, to come to me and tell
me what I must do ? ’

‘I have not told you anything you must do,’ Robert Jordan said
to him.

‘You will though,’ Pablo said. ‘There. There is the badness.’

He pointed at the two heavy packs that they had lowered to the
18

ground while they had watched the horses. Seeing the horses had
seemed to bring this all to a head in him and seeing that Robert
Jordan knew horses had seemed to loosen his tongue. The three
of them stood now by the rope corral and the patchy sunlight
shone on the coat of the bay stallion. Pablo looked at him and then
pushed with his foot against the heavy pack. ‘There is the bad-
ness.’

‘I come only for my duty,’ Robert Jordan told him. ‘I come
under orders from those who are conducting the war. If I ask you
to help me, you can refuse and I will find others who will help me.
I have not even asked you for help yet. I have to do what I am
ordered to do and I can promise you of its importance. That I am
a foreigner is not my fault. I would rather have been born here.’

‘To me, now, the most important is that we be not disturbed
here,’ Pablo said, ‘To me, now, my duty is to those who are with
me and to myself.’

‘Thyself. Yes,* Anselmo said. ‘Thyself now since a long time.
Thyself and thy horses. Until thou hadst horses thou wert with
us. Now thou art another capitalist more.’

‘That is unjust,’ said Pablo. T expose the horses all the time for
the cause.’

‘Very little,’ said Anselmo scornfully. ‘Very little in my judge-
ment. To steal, yes. To eat well, yes. To murder, yes. To fight, no.’

‘You are an old man who will make himself trouble with his
mouth.’

‘I am an old man ^yho is afraid of no one,’ Anselmo told him.
‘Also I am an old man without horses,’

‘You are an old man who may not live long.’

‘I am an old man who will live until I die,’ Anselmo said. ‘And
I am not afraid of foxes.’

Pablo said nothing but picked up the pack.

‘Nor of wolves either,’ Anselmo said, picking up the other pack.
‘If thou art a wolf.’

‘Shut thy mouth,’ Pablo said to him. ‘Thou art an old man who
always talks too much.’

‘And would do whatever he said he would do,’ Anselmo said,
bent under the pack. ‘And who now is hungry. And thirsty. Go
on, guerrilla leader with the sad face. Lead us to something to eat.’

'It is starting badly enough, Robert Jordan thought. But An-
selmo’ s a man. They are wonderful when they are good, he

19

thought. There is no people like them when they are good and
when they go bad there is no people that is wor$p. Anselmo must
have known what he was doing when he brought us here. But I
don’t like it. I don’t like any o£ it.

The only good sign was that Pablo was carrying the pack and
that he had given him the carbine. Perhaps he is always like that,
Robert Jordan thought. Maybe he is just one o£ the gloomy ones.

No, he said to himself, don’t fool yourself. You do not know
how he was before; but you do know that he is going bad fast and
without hiding it. When he starts to hide it he will have made a
decision. Remember that, he told himself. The first friendly thing
he does, he will have made a decision. They are awfully good
horses, though, he thought, beautiful horses. I wonder what could
make me feel the way those horses make Pablo feel. The old man
was right. The horses made him rich and as soon as he was rich he
wanted to enjoy life. Pretty soon he’ll feel bad because he can’t
join the Jockey Club, I guess, he thought. Pauvre Pablo. II a
manque son Jockey.

That idea made him feel better. He grinned, looking at the two
bent backs and the big packs ahead of him moving through the
trees. He had not made any jokes with himself all day and now
that he had made one he felt much better. You’re getting to be as
all the rest of them, he told himself. You’re getting gloomy, too.
He’d certainly been solemn and gloomy with Golz. The job had
overwhelmed him a little. Slighdy overwhelmed, he thought.
Plenty overwhelmed. Golz was gay and he had wanted him to be
gay too before he left, but he hadn’t been.

All the best ones, when you thought it over, were gay. It was
much better to be gay and it was a sign of something too. It was
like having immortality while you were still alive. That was a
complicated one. There were not many of them left though. No,
there were not many of the gay ones left. There were very damned
few of them left. And if you keep on thinking like that, my boy,
you won’t be left either. Turn off the thinking now, old timer, old .
comrade. You’re a bridge-blower now. Not a thinker. Man, I’m
hungry, he thought. I hope Pablo eats well.

20

CHAPTER 2

They had come through the heavy timber to the cup-shaped
upper end of the little valley and he saw where the camp must be,
under the rim-rock that rose ahead of them through the trees.

That was the camp all right and it was a good camp. You did
not see it at all until you were up to it and Robert Jordan knew it
could not be spotted from the air. Nothing would show from
above. It was as well hidden as a bear’s den. But it seemed to be
little better guarded. He looked at it carefully as they came up.

There was a large cave in the rim-rock formation, and beside
the opening a man sat with his back against the rock, his legs
stretched out on the ground, and his carbine leaning against the
rock. He was cutting away on a stick with a knife and he stared
at them as they came up, then went on whittling.

‘ Hola ,’ said the seated man. ‘What is this that comes? 9

‘The old man and a dynamiter, 9 Pablo told him and lowered the
pack inside the entrance to the cave. Anselmo lowered his pack,
too, and Robert Jordan unslung the rifle and leaned it against the
rock.

‘Don’t leave it so close to the cave, 9 the whittling man, who had
blue eyes in a dark, good-looking lazy gipsy face, the colour of
smoked leather, said. ‘There’s a Are in there. 9

‘Get up and put it away thyself, 9 Pablo said. ‘Put it by that tree. 9

The gipsy did not move but said something unprintable, then,
‘Leave it there. Blow thyself up, 9 he said lazily. ‘ ’Twill cure thy
diseases. 9

‘What do you make? 9 Robert Jordan sat down by the gipsy.
The gipsy showed him. It was a figure four trap and he was whit-
tling the crossbar for it.

‘For foxes, 9 he said. ‘With a log for a dead-fall. It breaks their
backs. 9 He grinned at Jordan. ‘Like this, see? 9 He made a motion
of the framework of the trap collapsing, the log falling, then
shook his head, drew in his hand, and spread his arms to show the
fox with a broken back. ‘Very practical, 9 he explained.

‘He catches rabbits, 9 Anselmo said. ‘He is a gipsy. So if he

21

catches rabbits he says it is foxes. If he catches a fox he would say
it was an elephant.’

‘And if I catch an elephant?’ the gipsy asked and showed his
white teeth again and winked at Robert Jordan.

‘You’d say it was a tank,’ Anselmo told him.

‘I’ll get a tank,’ the gipsy told him. ‘I will get a tank. And you
can say it is what you please.’

‘Gipsies talk much and kill little,’ Anselmo told him.

The gipsy winked at Robert Jordan and went on whittling.

Pablo had gone in out of sight in the cave. Robert Jordan hoped
he had gone for food. He sat on the ground by the gipsy and the
afternoon sunlight came down through the tree tops and was
warm on his outstretched legs. He could smell food now in the
cave, the smell of oil and of onions and of meat frying, and his
stomach moved with hunger inside of him.

‘We can get a tank,’ he said to the gipsy. ‘It is not too difficult.’

‘With this?’ the gipsy pointed toward the two sacks.

‘Yes,’ Robert Jordan told him. ‘I will teach you. You make a
trap. It is not too difficult.’

‘You and me?’

‘Sure,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘Why not? ’

‘Hey,’ the gipsy said to Anselmo. ‘Move those two sacks to
where they will be safe, will you? They’re valuable.’

Anselmo grunted. ‘I am going for wine,’ he told Robert Jordan.
Robert Jordan got up and lifted the sacks away from the cave en-
trance and leaned them, one on each side of a tree trunk. He knew
what was in them and he never liked to see them close together.

‘Bring a cup for me,’ the gipsy told him.

‘Is there wine?’ Robert Jordan asked, sitting down again by
the gipsy.

‘Wine? Why not? A whole skinful. Half a skinful, anyway.’

‘And what to eat?’

‘Everything, man,’ the gipsy said. ‘We eat like generals.’

‘And what do gipsies do in the war?’ Robert Jordan asked him..

‘They keep on being gipsies.’

‘That’s a good job.’

‘The best,’ the gipsy said. ‘How do they call thee?*

‘Roberto. And thee?’

‘Rafael. And this of the tank is serious? *

‘Surely. Why not?’

22

Anselmo came out of the mouth of the cave with a deep stone
basin full of red wine and with his fingers through the handles of
three cups. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘They have cups and all.’ Pablo came
out behind them.

‘There is food soon,’ he said. ‘Do you have tobacco?’

Robert Jordan went over to the packs and, opening one, felt in-
side an inner pocket and brought out one of the flat boxes of Rus-
sian cigarettes he had gotten at Golz’s headquarters. He ran his
thumbnail around the edge of the box and, opening the lid,
handed them to Pablo who took half a dozen. Pablo, holding
them in one of his huge hands, picked one up and looked at it
against the light. They were long narrow cigarettes with paste-
board cylinders for mouthpieces.

‘Much air and little tobacco,’ he said. ‘I know these. The other
with the rare name had them.*

‘Kashkin,’ Robert Jordan said and offered the cigarettes to the
gipsy and Anselmo, who each took one.

‘Take more,’ he said and they each took another. He gave them
each four more, they making a double nod with the hand holding
the cigarettes so that the cigarette dipped its end as a man salutes
with a sword, to thank him.

‘Yes,’ Pablo said. ‘It was a rare name.*

‘Here is the wine.’ Anselmo dipped a cup out of the bowl and
handed it to Robert Jordan, then dipped for himself and the gipsy.

‘Is there no wine for me?’ Pablo asked. They were all sitting
together by the cave entrance.

Anselmo handed him his cup and went into the cave for
another. Coming out he leaned over the bowl and dipped the
cup full and they all touched cup edges.

The wine was good, tasting faintly resinous from the wineskin,
but excellent, light, and clean on his tongue. Robert Jordan drank
it slowly, feeling it spread warmly through his tiredness.

‘The food comes shortly,’ Pablo said. ‘And this foreigner with
the rare name, how did he die?’

‘He was captured and he killed himself.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘He was wounded and he did not wish to be a prisoner.’

‘What were the details?’

‘I don’t know,’ he lied. He knew the details very well and he
knew they would not make good talking now.

23

£ He made us promise to shoot him in case he were wounded at
the business of the train and should be unable to get away/ Pablo
said. ‘He spoke in a very rare manner/

He must have been jumpy even then, Robert Jordan thought.
Poor old Kashkin.

‘He had a prejudice against killing himself/ Pablo said. ‘He
told me that. Also he had a great fear of being tortured/

‘Did he tell you that, too?’ Robert Jordan asked him.

‘Yes/ the gipsy said. ‘He spoke like that to all of us.’

‘Were you at the train, too?’

‘Yes. All of us were at the train.’

‘He spoke in a very rare manner/ Pablo said. ‘But he was very
brave.’

Poor old Kashkin, Robert Jordan thought. He must have been
doing more harm than good around here. I wish I would have
known he was that jumpy as far back as then. They should have
pulled him out. You can’t have people around doing this sort of
work and talking like that. That is no way to talk. Even if they
accomplish their mission they are doing more harm than good,
talking that sort of stuff.

_ ‘ He w as a little strange,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘I think he was a
little crazy.’

But very dexterous at producing explosions,’ the gipsy said.
‘And very brave.’

But crazy,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘In this you have to have very
much head and be very cold in the head. That was no way to
talk/

And you, Pablo said. If you are wounded in such a thing as
this bridge, you would be willing to be left behind?’

‘Listen/ Robert Jordan said and, leaning forward, he dipped
himself another cup of the wine. ‘Listen to me clearly. If ever I
should have any little favours to ask of any man, I will ask him at
the time.*

‘Good,’ said die gipsy approvingly. ‘In this way speak the good
ones. Ah ! Here it comes. ’

‘You have eaten/ said Pablo.

‘And I can eat twice more,’ the gipsy told him. ‘Look now who
brings it/

The girl stooped as she came out of the cave mouth carrying the
big iron cooking platter and Robert Jordan saw her face turned
24

at an angle and at the same time saw the strange thing about her.
She smiled and said, t Hola y Comrade,’ and Robert Jordan said,
' Salud / and was careful not to stare and not to look away. She set
down the flat iron platter in front of him and he noticed her hand-
some brown hands. Now she looked him full in the face and
smiled. Her teeth were white in her brown face and her skin and
her eyes were the same golden tawny brown. She had high cheek-
bones, merry eyes, and a straight mouth with full lips. Her hair
was the golden brown of a grain field that has been burned dark
in the sun, but it was cut short all over her head so that it was but
litde longer than the fur on a beaver pelt. She smiled in Robert
Jordan’s face and put her brown hand up and ran it over her head,
flattening the hair which rose again as her hand passed. She has a
beautiful face, Robert Jordan thought. She’d be beautiful if they
hadn’t cropped her hair.

‘That is the way I comb it,’ she said to Robert Jordan and
laughed. ‘Go ahead and eat. Don’t stare at me. They gave me this
haircut in Valladolid. It’s almost grown out now.’

She sat down opposite him and looked at him. He looked back
at her and she smiled and folded her hands together over heir
knees. Her legs slanted long and clean from the open cuffs of the
trousers as she sat with her hands across her knees and he could
see the shape of her small, up-tilted breasts under the grey shirt.
Every time Robert Jordan looked at her he could feel a thickness
in his throat. t

‘There are no plates,’ Anselmo said. ‘Use your own knife.’ The
girl had leaned four forks, tines down, against the sides of the
iron dish.

They were all eating out of the platter, not speaking, as is the
Spanish custom. It was rabbit cooked with onions and green
peppers and there were chick peas in the red wine sauce. It was
well cooked, the rabbit meat flaked off the bones, and the sauce
was delicious. Robert Jordan drank another cup of wine while he
ate. The girl watched him all through the meal. Everyone else
was watching his food and eating. Robert Jordan wiped up the
last of the sauce in front of him with a piece of bread, piled the
rabbit bones to one side, wiped the spot where they had been for
sauce, then wiped his fork clean with the bread, wiped his knife
and put it away, and ate the bread. He leaned over and dipped
his cup full of wine and the girl still watched him.

^5

Robert Jordan drank half the cup of wine but the thickness still
came in his throat when he spoke to the girl.

‘How art thou called?’ he asked. Pablo looked at him quickly
when he heard the tone of- his voice. Then he got up and walked
away.

‘Maria. And thee?’

‘Roberto. Have you been long in the mountains ? *

‘Three months.’

‘Three months?’ He looked at her hair, that was as thick and
short and rippling when she passed her hand over it, now in em-
barrassment, as a grain field in the wind on a hillside. ‘It was
shaved,’ she said. ‘They shaved it regularly in the prison at Valla-
dolid. It has taken three months to grow to this. I was on the
train. They were taking me to the south. Many of the prisoners
were caught after the train was blown up but I was not. I came
with these.’

‘I found her hidden in the rocks,’ the gipsy said. ‘It was when
we were leaving. Man, but this one was ugly. We took her along
but many times I thought we would have to leave her.’

‘And the other who was with them at the train?’ asked Maria.
‘The other blond one. The foreigner. Where is he?*

‘Dead, 5 Robert Jordan said. ‘In April.’

‘In April? The train was in April.’

‘Yes,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘He died ten days after the train.’

‘Poor man,’ she said. ‘He was very brave. And you do that same
business?’

‘Yes.’

‘You have done trains, too? ’

‘Yes. Three trains.’

‘Here?’ ,

‘In Estremadura,’ he said. ‘I was in Estremadura before I came
here. We do very much in Estremadura. There are many of us
working in Estremadura.’

‘And why do you come to these mountains now?’
t T take the place of the other blond one. Also I know this country
from before the movement.’

‘You know it well?’

‘No, not really well. But I learn fast. I have a good map and I
have a good guide.’

‘The old man,’ she ’nodded. ‘The old man is very good/

26

‘Thank you,’ Anselmo said to her and Robert Jordan realized
suddenly that he and the girl were not alone and he realized too
that it was hard for him to look at her because it made his voice
change so. He was violating the second rule of the two rules for
getting on well with people that speak Spanish: give the men
tobacco and leave the women alone; and he realized, very sud-
denly, that he did not care. There were so many things that he
had not to care about, why should he care about that?

‘You have a very beautiful face,’ he said to Maria. ‘I wish I
would have had the luck to see you before your hair was cut/

‘It will grow out/ she said. ‘In six months it will be long
enough/

‘You should have seen her when we brought her from the train.
She was so ugly it would make you sick/

‘Whose woman are you?* Robert Jordan asked, trying now to
pull out of it. ‘Are you Pablo’s?’

She looked at him and laughed, then slapped him on the knee.

‘Of Pablo? You have seen Pablo?’

‘Well, then, of Rafael. I have seen Rafael/

‘Of Rafael neither.’

‘Of no one/ the gipsy said. ‘This is a very strange woman. Is of
no one. But she cooks well/

‘Really of no one?’ Robert Jordan asked her.

‘Of no one. No one. Neither in joke nor in seriousness. Nor of
thee either.’

‘No?’ Robert Jordan said and he could feel the thickness com-
ing in his throat again. ‘Good. I have no time for any woman.
That is true/

‘Not fifteen minutes?’ the gipsy asked teasingly. ‘Not a quarter
of an hour?’ Robert Jordan didmot answer. He looked at the girl,
Maria, and his throat felt too thick for him to trust himself to
speak.

Maria looked at him and laughed, then blushed suddenly but
kept on looking at him.

‘You are blushing/ Robert Jordan said to her. ‘Do you blush
much?’

‘Never.*

‘You are blushing now/

‘Then I will go into the cave.’

‘Stay here, Maria/

27

‘No/ she said and did not smile at him. ‘I will go into the cave
now.’ She picked up the iron plate they had eaten from and the
four forks. She moved awkwardly as a colt moves, but with that
same grace as of a young animal.

‘Do you want the cups ? ’ she asked.

Robert Jordan was still looking at her and she blushed again.

‘Don’t make me do that/ she said. ‘I do not like to do that.’

‘Leave them/ the gipsy said to her. ‘Here/ he dipped into the
stone bowl and handed the full cup to Robert Jordan who watched
the girl duck her head and go into the cave carrying the heavy
iron dish.

‘Thank you/ Robert Jordan said. His voice was all right again,
now that she was gone. ‘This is the last one. We’ve had enough
of this.*

‘We will finish the bowl/ the gipsy said. ‘There is over half a
skin. We packed it in on one of the horses/

‘That was the last raid of Pablo/ Anselmo said. ‘Since then he
had done nothing/

‘How many are you?’ Robert Jordan asked.

‘We are s£ven and there are two women/

‘Two?*

‘Yes. The mujer of Pablo/

‘And she?’

‘In the cave. The girl can cook a little. I said she cooks well to
please her. But mostly she helps the mujer of Pablo/

‘And how is she, the mujer of Pablo? ’

‘Something barbarous/ the gipsy grinned. ‘Something very
barbarous. If you think Pablo is ugly you should see his woman.
But brave. A hundred times braver than Pablo. But something
barbarous.’

‘Pablo was brave in the beginning/, Anselmo said. ‘Pablo was
something serious in the beginning/

‘He killed more people than the cholera/ the gipsy said. ‘At the
start of the movement, Pablo killed more people than the typhoid
fever/

‘But since a long time he is muy flojo / Anselmo said. ‘He is
very flaccid. He is very much afraid to die/

‘It is possible- that it is because he has killed so many at the
beginning/ the gipsy said philosophically. ‘Pablo killed more
than the bubonic plague. ’

28

‘That and the riches,’ Anselmo said. ‘Also he drinks very much.
Now he would like to retire like a matador de toros. Like a bull-
fighter. But he cannot retire.’

‘If he crosses to the other side of the lines they will take his
horses and make him go in the army,’ the gipsy said. ‘In f me there
is no love for being in the army either.’

‘Nor is there in any other gipsy,’ Anselmo said.

‘Why should there be?’ the gipsy asked. ‘Who wants to be in
any army? Do we make the revolution to be in an army? I am
willing to fight but not to be in an army.’

‘Where are the others?’ asked Robert Jordan. He felt comfort-
able and sleepy now from the wine and lying back on the floor of
the forest he saw through the tree tops the small afternoon clouds
of the mountains moving slowly in the high Spanish sky.

‘There are two asleep in the cave,* the gipsy said. ‘Two are on
guard above where we have the gun. One is on guard below.
They are probably all asleep.’

Robert Jordan rolled over on his side.

‘What kind of a gun is it?’

‘A very rare name,’ the gipsy said. ‘It has gone away from me
for the moment. It is a machine gun.’

It must be an automatic rifle, Robert Jordan thought.

‘How much does it weigh?’ he asked.

‘One man can carry it but it is heavy. It has three legs that fold.
We got it in the last serious raid. The, one before the wine,’

‘How many rounds have you for it?*

‘An infinity,’ the gipsy said. ‘One whole case of an unbelievable
heaviness.’

Sounds like about five hundred rounds, Robert Jordan thought-

‘Does it feed from a pan or a belt?’

‘From round iron cans on the top of the gun.’

Hell, it’s a Lewis gun, Robert Jordan thought.

‘Do you know anything about a machine gun?’ he asked the
old man.

‘Nada f * said Anselmo. ‘Nothing.’

‘Arid thou ? * to the gipsy.

‘That they fire with much rapidity, and become so hot the
barrel burns the hand that touches it,’ the gipsy said proudly.

‘Everyone knows that,’ Anselmo said with contempt.

‘Perhaps,* the gipsy said. ‘But he asked me to tell what I know
29

about a mdquina and I told him.’ Then he added, ‘Also, unlike
• an ordinary rifle, they continue to Are as long as you exert pres-
sure on the trigger.’ r

‘Unless they jam, run out of ammunition, or get so hot they
melt, ’ Robert J ordan said in English. y

‘What do you say ? ’ Anselmo asked him.

‘Nothing,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘I was only looking into the
future in English. ’

‘That is something truly rare,’ the gipsy said. ‘Looking into the
future in Ingles. Can you read in the palm of the hand ? ’

‘No,’ Robert Jordan said and he dipped another cup of wine.
‘But if thou canst I wish thee would read in the palm of my hand
and tell me what is going to pass in the next three days.’

‘The mujer of Pablo reads in the hands,’ the gipsy said. ‘But she
is so irritable and of such a barbarousness that I do not know if
she will do it.’

Robert Jordan sat up now and took a swallow of the wine.

‘Let us see the mujer of Pablo now,’ he said. ‘If it is that bad let
us get it over with.’

I would not disturb her, Rafael said. ‘She has a strong hatred
forme.’ b

‘Why?’

‘She treats me as a time waster.*

‘What injustice,’ Anselmo taunted.

‘She is against gipsies.’

‘What an error,’ Anselmo said.

‘She has gipsy blood,’ Rafael said. ‘She knows of what she
speaks.’ He grinned. ‘But she has a tongue that scalds and that
bites like a bull whip. With this tongue she takes the hide from
anyone. In strips. She is of an unbelievable barbarousness.’

‘How does she get along with the girl, Maria?’ Robert Jordan
asked.

‘Good. She likes the girl. But let anyone come near her seri-
ously He shook his head apd clucked with his tongue
‘She is very good with the girl,’ Anselmo said. ‘She takes good
care of her.’ *

‘When we picked the girl up at the time of the train she was
very strange,’ Rafael said. ‘She would not speak and she cried all
the time and if anyone touched her she would shiver like a wet
dog. Only lately has she been better. Lately she has been much

better. To-day she was fine. Just now, talking to you, she was very
good. We would have left her after the train. Certainly it was not
worth being delayed by something so sad and ugly and appar-
ently worthless. But the old woman tied a rope to her and when
the girl thought she could not go farther, the old womaij beat her
with the end of the rope to make her go. Then when she could
not really go farther, the old woman carried her over her shoulder.
When the old woman could not carry her, I carried her. We were
going up that hill breast high in the gorse and heather. And when
I could no longer carry her, Pablo carried her. But what the old
woman had to say to us to make us do it.’ He shook his head at
the memory. 4 It is true that the girl is long in the legs but is not
heavy. The bones are light and she weighs little. But she weighs
enough when we had to carry her and stop to fire and then carry
her again with the old woman lashing at Pablo with the rope and
carrying his rifle, putting it in his hand when he would drop the
girl, making him pick her up again and loading the gun for him
while she cursed him; taking the shells from his pouches and
shoving them down into the magazine and cursing him. The
dusk was coming well on them and when the night came it was
all right. But it was lucky that they had no cavalry.’

‘It must have been very hard at the train,’ Anselmo said. ‘I was
not there/ he explained to Robert Jordan. ‘There was the band of
Pablo, of El Sordo, whom we will see to-night, and two other
bands of these mountains. I had gone to the other side of the
lines.’

‘In addition to the blond one with the rare name — ’ the gipsy
said.

‘Kashkin.’

‘Yes. It is a name I can never dominate. We had two with a
machine gun. They were sent also by the army. They could not
get the gun away and lost it. Certainly it weighed no more than
that girl and if the old woman had been' over them they would
have gotten it away.’ He shook his head, remembering, then went
on. ‘Never in my life have I seen such a thing as when the ex-
* plosion was produced. The train was coming steadily. We saw it
far away. And I had an excitement so great that I cannot tell it.
We saw steam from it and then later came the noise of the whistle.
Then it came chu-chu-chu-chu-chu-chu steadily larger and larger
and then, at the moment of the explosion, the front wheels of the

31

engine rose up and all of the earth seemed to rise in a great cloud
of blackness and a roar and the engine rose high in the cloud of
dirt and of the wooden ties rising in the air as in a dream and then
it fell on to its side like a great wounded animal and there was an
explosion of white steam before the clods of the other explosion
had ceased to fall on us and the mdquina commenced to speak ta-
tat-tat-ta 1 * went the gipsy, shaking his two clenched fists up and
down in front of him, thumbs up, on an imaginary machine gun.
‘Ta ! Ta ! Tat ! Tat! Ta ! Ta F he exulted. ‘Never in my life have
I seen such a thing, with the troops running from the train and
the mdquina speaking into them and the men falling. It was
then that I put my hand on the mdquina in my excitement and
discovered that the barrel burned and at that moment the old
woman slapped me on the side of the face and said, “Shoot, you
fool ! Shoot or I will kick your brains in F’ Then I commenced to
shoot but it was very hard to hold my gun steady and the troops
were running up the far hill. Later, after we had been down at the
train to see what there was to take, an officer forced some troops
back toward us at the point of a pistol. He kept waving the pistol
and shouting at them and we were all shooting at him but no one
hit him. Then some troops lay down and commenced firing and
the officer walked up and down behind them with his pistol and
still we could not hit him and the mdquina could not fire on him
because of the position of the train. This officer shot two men as
they lay and still they would not get up and he was cursing them
and finally they got up, one, two and three at a time and came
running .toward us and the train. Then they lay flat again and
fired. Then we left, with the mdquina still speaking over us as we
left. It was then I found the girl where she had run from the train
to the rocks and she ran with us. It was those troops who hunted
us until that night.’

‘It must have been something very hard,* Anselmo said. ‘Of
much emotion.’

‘It was the only good thing we have done,’ said a deep voice.
‘What are you doing now, you lazy drunken obscene unsayable f
son <5f an unnameable unmarried gipsy obscenity? What are you
doing?*

Robert Jordan saw a woman of about fifty, almost as big as
Pablo, almost as wide as she was tall, in black peasant shirt and
blouse, with heavy wool socks on heavy legs, black rope-soled

32

shoes, and a brown face like a model for a granite monument. She
had big but nice-looking hands and her thick curly black hair was
twisted into a knot on her neck.

‘Answer me/ she said to the gipsy, ignoring the others.

‘I was talking to these comrades. This one comes as a dyna-
miter/

’ ‘I know all that/ the mujer of Pablo said. ‘Get out of here now
and relieve Andres who is on guard at the top.’

‘ Me voy 3 y the gipsy said. ‘I go.’ He turned to Robert Jordan. ‘I
will see thee at the hour of eating/

‘Not even in a joke/ said the woman to him. ‘Three times you
have eaten to-day, according to my count. Go now and send me
Andres/

‘HolaJ she said to Robert Jordan and put out her hand and
smiled. ‘How are you and how is everything in the Republic? *
‘Good/ he said and returned her strong hand grip. ‘Both with'
me and with the Republic/

‘I am happy/ she told him. She was looking into his face and
smiling and he noticed she had fine grey eyes. ‘Do you come for
us to do another train ? *

‘No/ said Robert Jordan, trusting her instantly. ‘For a bridge/
‘No es nada / she said. ‘A bridge is nothing. When do we do an-
other train now that we have horses?’

‘Later. This bridge is of great importance/

‘The girl told me your comrade who was with us at the train is
dead/

‘Yes/

‘What a pity. Never have I seen such an explosion. He was a
man of talent. He pleased me very much. Is it not possible to do
another train now? There are many men here now in the hills.
Too many. It is already hard to get food. It would be better to get
out. And we have horses/

‘We have to do this bridge/

‘Where is it?’ .

‘Quite close/

‘All the better/ the mujer of Pablo said. ‘Let us blow all the
bridges there are here and get out. I am sick of this place. Here is
too much concentration of people. No good can come of it. Here
is a stagnation that is repugnant/

She sighted Pablo through the trees.

33

j-BorrachoP she called to him, ‘Drunkard. Rotten drunkard!’
She turned back to Robert Jordan cheerfully. ‘He’s taken a leather
wme bottle to drink alone in the woods,’ she said. ‘He’s drinking
all the time. This life is ruining him. Young man, I am very con-
tent that you have come.’ She clapped him on the back. ‘Ah ’ she

T\7° U ’ rC biggCr ^ you look ’’ and ran her h ^nd over his
shoulder, feeling the muscle under the flannel shirt. ‘Good. I am

very content that you have come.’

‘And I equally.’

‘We wiU understand each other,’ she said. ‘Have a cud of
wine.’ r

‘We have already had some,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘But will
you? 9

. dinn ? r> ’ s he said. ‘It gives me heartburn.’ Then she

sighted Pablo again. ( /Borrac/iol J she shouted. ‘Drunkard!’ She
turned to Robert Jordan and shook her head. ‘He was a very good
inan, she told him. ‘But now he is terminated. And listen to me
about another thing. Be very good and careful about the girl. The
Maria. She has had a bad time. Understandest thou?’

‘Yes. Why do you say this ? ’

‘I saw how she was from seeing thee when she came into the
cave. I saw her watching thee before she came out.*

‘I joked with her a litde.’

‘She was in a very bad state,’ the woman .of Pablo said. ‘Now
she is better, she ought to get out of here.’

• ‘Clearly she can be sent through the lines with Anselmo.’
ou and the Anselmo can take her when this terminates.’

■ R ±f ,0rd f the acl * In his throat and his voice thicken-
mg. That might be done,’ he said.

The mujer of Pablo looked at him, and shook her head. ‘Ayee
Ayee, she said. ‘Are all men like that ? ’ - '

I sa * d nothing. She is beautiful, you know tha t.’

No, she is not beautiful. But she begins to be beautiful you
mean, the woman of Pablo said. ‘Men. It is a shame to us women
hat we make them. No. In, seriousness. Are there not hr,m~, to .
care for such as her under the Republic?’

‘Yes,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘Good places. On the coast near
Valenca. In other places too. There they will treat her well
and she can work with children. There are the children from
evacuatecrvillages. They will teach her the work.’

34

‘That is what I want,’ the mujer o£ Pablo said. ‘Pablo has a sick-
ness for her already. It is another thing which destroys him. It lies
on him like a sickness when he sees her. It is best that she goes
now.*

‘We can take her after this is over.*

‘And you will be careful of her now if I trust you? I speak to
you as though I knew you for a long time.*

‘It is like that,* Robert Jordan said, ‘when people understand
one another.*

‘Sit down,’ the woman of Pablo said. ‘I do not ask any promise
because what will happen, will happen. Only if you will not take
her out, then I ask a promise.*

‘Why if I would not take her?’

‘Because I do not want her crazy here after you will go. I have
had her crazy before and I have enough without that.’

‘We will take her after the bridge,* Robert Jordan said. ‘If we
are alive after the bridge, we will take her.*

‘I do not like to hear you speak in that manner. That manner of
speaking never brings luck.’

‘I spoke in that manner only to make a promise,’ Robert Jordan
said. ‘I am not of those who speak gloomily.’

‘Let me see thy hand,’ the woman said. ^Robert Jordan put his
hand out and the woman opened it, held it in her own big hand,
rubbed her thumb over it, and looked at it, carefully, then
dropped it. She sto6d up. He got up too and she looked at him
without smiling.

‘What did you see in it?’ Robert Jordan asked her. ‘I don’t be-
- lieve in it. You won’t scare me.*

‘Nothing,’ she told him. ‘I saw nothing in it.’

‘Yes you did. I am only curious. I do not believe in such things.*
‘In what do you believe?*

‘In many things but not in that.’

‘In what ? ’

‘In my work.’ ,

‘Yes, I saw that.’

‘Tell me what else you saw.*

‘I saw nothing else,’ she said bitterly. ‘The bridge is very diffi-
cult, you said?’

‘No. I said it is very important.*

‘But it can be difficult? ’

35

'Yes. And now I go down to look at it. How many men have
yon here ?’

‘Five that are any good. The gipsy is worthless although his in-
tentions are good. He has a good heart. Pablo I no longer trust.’
‘How many men has El Sordo that are good? ’

‘Perhaps eight. We will see to-night. He is coming here. He is
a very practical man. He also has some dynamite. Not very much,
though. You will speak with him.*

‘Have you sent for him?’

‘He comes every night. He is a neighbour. Also a friend as well
as a comrade.’

‘What do you think of him?’

‘He is a very good man. Also very practical. In the business of
the train he was enormous.’

‘And in the other bands ? *

‘Advising them in time, it should be possible to unite fifty rifles
of a certain dependability.*

‘How dependable?’

‘Dependable within the gravity of the situation.’

‘And how many cartridges per rifle?’

Perhaps twenty. Depending how many they would bring for
this business. If they would come for this business. Remember thee
that in this of a bridge there is no money and no loot and in thy
reservations of talking, much danger, and that afterwards there
must be a moving from these mountains. Many will oppose this
of the bridge.’

‘Clearly.’

‘In this way it is better not to speak of it unnecessarily.’

‘I am in accord.’

‘Then after thou hast studied thy bridge we will talk to-night
with El Sordo.’ . °

‘I go down now with Anselmo.’

‘Wake him then,’ she said. ‘Do you want a carbine?’

Thank you, he told her. ‘It is good to have but I will not use it.

I go to look, not to make disturbances. Thank you for what you
have told me. I like very much your way of speaking.’

‘I try to speak frankly.’

‘Then tell me what you saw in the hand,’

‘No,’ she said and shook her head. ‘I saw nothing. Go now to
thy bridge. I will look after thy equipment’

3 ^

‘Cover it and that no one should touch it. It is better there than
in the caved

‘It shall be covered and no one shall touch it,* the woman of
Pablo said. ‘Go now to thy bridged
‘Anselmod Robert Jordan said, putting his hand on the
shoulder of the old man who lay sleeping, his head on his arms.
The old man looked up. ‘Yes,’ he sdid. ‘Of course. Let us god

CHAPTER 3

They came down the last two hundred yards, moving carefully
from tree to tree in the shadows and now, through the last pines
of the steep hillside, the bridge was only fifty yards away. The late
afternoon sun that still came over the brown shoulder of the
mountain showed the bridge dark against the steep emptiness of
the gorge. It was a steel bridge of a single span and there was a
sentry box at each end. It was wide enough for two motor-cars to
pass and it spanned, in solid-flung metal grace, a deep gorge at
the bottom of which, far below, a brook leaped in white water
through rocks and boulders down to the main stream of the pass.

The sun was in Robert Jordan’s eyes and the bridge showed
only in outline. Then the sun lessened and was gone, and looking
up through the trees at- the brown, rounded height that it had
gone behind, he saw, now that he no longer looked into the glare,
that the mountain slope was a delicate new green and that there
were patches of old snow under the crest.

Then he was watching the bridge again in the sudden short
trueness of the litde light that would be left, and studying its con-
struction. The problem of its demolition was not difficult. As he
watched he took out a notebook from his breast pocket and made
several quick line sketches. As he made the drawings he did not
figure the charges. He would do that later. Now he was noting the
points where the explosive should be placed in order to cut the
support of the span and drop a section of it into the gorge. It could
be done unhurriedly, scientifically, and correctly with a half-dozen
charges laid and braced to explode simultaneously; or it could be
done roughly with two big ones. They would need to be very big
ones, on opposite sides and should go at the same time. He

37

sketched quickly and happily; glad at last to have the problem
under his hand; glad at last actually to be engaged upon it. Then
he shut his notebook, pushed the pencil into its leather holder in
the edge of the flap, put the notebook in his pocket, and buttoned
the pocket.

While he had sketched, Anselmo had been watching the road,
the bridge, and the sentry boxes. He thought they had come too
close to the bridge for safety and when the sketching was finished,
he was relieved.

As Robert Jordan buttoned the flap of his pocket and then lay
flat behind the pine trunk, looking out from behind it, Anselmo
put his hand on his elbow and pointed with one finger.

In the sentry box that faced toward them up the road, the sentry
was sitting holding his rifle, the bayonet fixed, between his knees.
He was smoking a cigarette and he wore a knitted cap and blanket
style cape. At fifty yards, you could not see anything about his
face. Robert Jordan put up his field glasses, shading the lenses
carefully with his cupped hands even though there was now no
sun to make a glint, and there was the rail of the bridge as clear
as though you could reach out and touch it and there was the face
of the sentry so clear he could see the sunken cheeks, the ash on
the cigarette, and the greasy shine of the bayonet. It was a
peasant’s face, the cheeks hollow under the high cheekbones, the
beard stubbled, the eyes shaded by the heavy brows, big hands
holding the rifle, heavy boots showing beneath the folds of the
blanket cape. There was a worn, blackened leather wine bottle on
the wall of the sentry box, there were some newspapers, and there
was no telephone. There could, of course, be a telephone on the
side he could not see; but there were no wires running from the
box that were visible. A telephone line ran along the road and its
wires were carried over the bridge. There was a charcoal brazier
outside the sentry box, made from an old petrol tin with the top
cut off and holes punched in it, which rested on two stones; but it
held no fire. There were some fire-blackened empty tins in the
ashes under it.

Robert Jordan handed the glasses to Anselmo who lay flat be-
side him. The old man grinned and shook his head. He tapped
his skull beside his eye with one finger.

*Ya lo veo,' he said in Spanish. ‘I have seen him/ speaking from
the front of his mouth with almost no movement of his lips In the

38

way that is quieter than any whisper. He looked at the sentry as
Robert Jordan smiled at him and, pointing with one finger, drew
the other across his throat. Robert Jordan nodded but he did not
smile.

The sentry box at the far end of the bridge faced away from
them and down the road and they could ;iot see into it. The road,
which was broad and oiled and well constructed, made a turn to
the left at the far end of the bridge and then swung out of sight
around a curve to the right. At this point it was enlarged from the
old road to its present width by cutting into the solid bastion of
the rock on the far side of the gorge; and its left or western edge,
looking down from the pas£ and the bridge, was marked and pro-
tected by a line of upright cut blocks of stone where its edge fell
sheer away to the gorge. The gorge was almost a canyon here,
where the brook, that the bridge was flung over, merged with
the main stream of the pass.

‘And k the other post?’ Robert Jordan asked Anselmo.

‘Five hundred metres below that turn. In the roadmender’s hut
that is built into the side of the rock.’

‘How many men?’ Robert Jordan asked.

He was watching the sentry again with his glasses. The sentry
rubbed his cigarette out on the plank wall of the box, then took a
leather tobacco pouch from his pocket, opened the paper of the
dead cigarette, and emptied the remnant of used tobacco into the
pouch. The sentry stood up, leaned his rifle against the wall of
the box and stretched, then picked up his rifle, slung it over his
shoulder, and walked out on to the bridge. Anselmo flattened on
the ground and Robert Jordan slipped his glasses into his shirt
pocket and put his head well behind the pine tree.

‘There are seven men and a corporal,’ Anselmo said close to his
ear. ‘I informed myself from the gipsy.’

‘We will go now as soon as he is quiet,’ Robert Jordan said,
‘We are too close.’

‘Hast thou seen what thou needest?’

‘Yes. All that I need.’

It was getting cold quickly now with the sun down and the
light was failing as the afterglow from the last sunlight on the
mountains behind them faded.

‘How does it look to thee ?’ Anselmo said softly as they watched
the sentry walk across the bridge toward the other box, his bayonet

39

bright in the last of the afterglow, his figure unshapely in the
blanket coat.

‘Very good,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Very, very good.’

‘I am glad,’ Anselmo said. ‘Should we go? Now there is no
chance that he sees us.’

The sentry was standing, his back toward them-, at the far end
of the bridge. From the gorge came the noise of the stream in the
boulders. Then through this noise came another noise, a steady,
racketing drone and they saw the sentry looking up, his knitted
cap slanted back, and turning their heads and looking up they
saw, high in the evening sky, three monoplanes in V formation,
showing minute and silvery at that height where there still was
sun, passing unbelievably quickly across the sky, their motors
now throbbing steadily.

‘Ours?’ Anselmo asked.

‘They seem so,’ Robert Jordan said but knew that at that height
you never could be sure. They could be an evening patrol of either
side. But you always said pursuit planes were ours because it made
people feel better. Bombers were another matter.

Anselmo evidently felt the same. ‘They are ours,’ he said. ‘I
recognize them. They are Moscas . 9

‘Good,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘They seem to me to be Moscas,
too.’

‘They are Moscas ,* Anselmo said.

Robert Jordan could have put the glasses on them and been sure
instandy but he preferred not to. It made no difference to him who
they were to-night and if it pleased the old man to have them be
ours, he did not want to take them away. Now, as they moved out
of sight toward Segovia, they did not look to be the green, red
wing-tipped, low-wing Russian conversion of the Boeing P32 that
the Spaniards called Moscas. You could not see the colours but the
cut was wrong. No. It was a Fascist Patrol coming home.

The sentry was still standing at the far box with his back turned.

‘Let us go,’ Robert Jordan said. He started up the hill, moving
carefully and taking advantage of the cover until they were out of
sight. Anselmo followed him at a hundred yards distance. When
they were well out of sight of the bridge, he stopped and the old
man came up and went into the lead and climbed steadily through
the pass, up the steep slope in the dark.

‘We have a formidable aviation,’ the old man said happily.

40

‘Yes.*

‘And we will win.*

‘We have to win.*

‘Yes. And after we have won you must come to hunt.*

‘To hunt what?’

‘The boar, the bear, the wolf, the ibex — *

‘You like to hunt?*

‘Yes, man. More than anything. We all hunt in my village. You
do not like to hunt?*

‘No,* said Robert Jordan. ‘I do not like to kill animals.’

‘With me it is the opposite,* the old man said. ‘I do not like to
kill men.’

‘Nobody does except those who are disturbed in the head,*
Robert Jordan said. ‘But I feel nothing against it when it is neces-
sary. When it is for the cause.*

‘It is a different thing, though,’ Anselmo said. ‘In my house,
when I had a house, and now I have no house, there were the tusks
of boar I had shot in the lower forest. There were the hides of
wolves I had shot. In the winter, hunting them in the snow. One
very big one, I killed at dusk in the outskirts of the village on my
way home one night in November. There were four wolf hides
on the floor of my house. They were worn by stepping on them
but they were wolf hides. There were the horns of ibex that I had
killed in the high Sierra, and there was an eagle stuffed by an em-
balmer of birds of Avila, with his wings spread, and eyes as yellow
and real as the eyes of an eagle alive. It was a very beautiful thing
and all of those things gave me great pleasure to contemplate.’

‘Yes,’ said Robert Jordan.

‘On the door of the church of my village was nailed the paw of
a bear that I killed in the spring, finding him on a hillside in the
snow, overturning a log with this same paw.*

‘When was this?*

‘Six years ago. And every time I saw that paw, like the hand of
a man, but with those long claws, dried and nailed through the
palm to the door of the church, I received a pleasure.*

‘Of pride?*

‘Of pride of remembrance of the encounter with the bear on
that hillside in the early spring. But of the killing of a man, who
is a man as we are, there is nothing good that remains.*

‘You can’t nail his paw to the church,* Robert Jordan.said.

4i

‘No. Such a barbarity is unthinkable. Yet the hand of a man is
like the paw of a bear.’

‘So is the chest of a man like the chest of a bear/ Robert Jordan
said. ‘With the hide removed from the bear, there are many
similarities in the muscles.’

‘Yes,’ Anselmo said. ‘The gipsies believe the bear to be a brother
of man.’

‘So do the Indians in America/ Robert Jordan said. ‘And when
they kill a bear they apologize to him and ask his pardon. They
put his skull in a tree and they ask him to forgive them before they
leave it.’

‘The gipsies believe the bear to be a brother to man because he
has the same body beneath his hide, because he drinks beer, be-
cause he enjoys music, and because he likes to dance.’

‘So also believe the Indians.’

‘Are the Indians then gipsies?’

‘No. But they believe alike about the bear.’

‘Clearly. The gipsies also believe he is a brother because he steals
for pleasure.’

‘Have you gipsy blood ? *

‘No. But I have seen much of them and clearly, since the move-
ment, more. There are many in the hills. To them it is not a sin to
kill outside the tribe. They deny this, but it is true,’

‘Like the Moors.’

‘Yes. But the gipsies have many laws they do not admit to hav-
ing. In the war many gipsies have become bad again as they were
in the olden times.’

‘They do not understand why the war is made. They do not
know for what we fight.’

‘No/ Anselmo said. ‘They only know now there is a war and
people may kill again as in the olden times without a surety of
punishment.’

‘You have killed?’ Robert Jordan asked in the intimacy of the
dark and of their day together.

‘Yes. Several times. But not with pleasure. Tome it is a sin to
kill a man. Even Fascists whom we must kill. To me there is a
great difference between the bear and the man and I do not believe
the wizardry of the gipsies about the brotherhood with animals.
No. I am against all killing of men.’

‘Yet you have killed.*

42

‘Yes. And will again. But if I live later, I will try to live in such a
way, doing no harm to anyone, that it will be forgiven/

‘By whom?’ %

‘Who knows? Since we do not have God here any more, neither
His Son nor the Holy Ghost, who forgives? I do not know/

‘You have not God any more? ’

‘No. Man. Certainly not. If there were God, never would He
have permitted what I have seen with my eyes. Let them have
God/

‘They claim Him/

‘Clearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But
now a man must be responsible to himself/

‘Then it is thyself who will forgive thee for killing/

‘I believe so/ Anselmo said. ‘Since you put it clearly in that way
I believe that must be it. But with or without God, I think it is a
sin to kill. To take the life of another is to me very grave. I will do
it whenever necessary but I am not of the race of Pablo/

‘To win a war we must kill our enemies. That has always been
true/

‘Clearly. In war we must kill. But I have very rare ideas/ An-
selmo said.

They were walking now close together in the dark and he
spoke softly, sometimes turning his head as he climbed. ‘I would
not kill even a Bishop. I would not kill a proprietor of any kind. I
would make them work each day as we have worked in the fields
and as we work in the mountains with the timber, all of the rest of
their lives. So they would see what man is born to. That they
should sleep where we sleep. That they should eat as we eat. But
above all that they should work. Thus they would learn/ ■

‘And they would survive to enslave thee again/

‘To kill them teaches nothing,’ Anselmo said. ‘You cannot ex-
terminate them because from their seed comes more with greater
hatred. Prison is nothing. Prison only makes hatred. That all our
enemies should learn/

‘But still thou hast killed/

‘Yes/ Anselmo said. ‘Many times and will again. But not with
pleasure and regarding it as a sin/

‘And the sentry. You joked of killing the sentry/

‘That was in joke. I would kill the sentry. Yes. Certainly and
with a clear heart considering our task. But not with pleasure/

43

‘We will leave them to those who enjoy it,* Robert Jordan said.
“There are eight and five. That is thirteen for those who enjoy it.’

‘There are many of those who enjoy it,* Anselmo said in the
dark. ‘We have many of those. Ivlore of those than of men who
would serve for a battle.’

‘Hast thou ever been in a battle? ’

‘Nay,* the old man said. ‘We fought in Segovia at the start of
the movement but we were beaten and we ran. I ran with the
others. We did not truly understand what we were doing, nor
how it should be done. Also I had only a shotgun with cartridges
of large buckshot and the guardia civil had Mausers. I could not
hit them with buckshot at a hundred yards, and at three hundred
yards they shot us as they wished as though we were rabbits. They
shot much and well and we were like sheep before them.’ He was
silent. Then asked, ‘Thinkest thou there will be a battle at the
bridge?’

‘There is a chance.*

‘I have never seen a battle without running,’ Anselmo said. ‘I
do not know how I would comport myself. I am an old man and
I have wondered.*

‘I will respond for thee,* Robert Jordan told him.

‘And hast thou been in many battles?*

‘Several.’

‘And what thinkest thou of this of the bridge ? *

‘First I think of the bridge. That is my business. It is not diffi-
cult to destroy the bridge. Then we wilhmake the dispositions for
the rest. For the preliminaries. It will all be written.’

* V ery few of these people read, ’ Anselmo said.

‘It will be written for everyone’s knowledge so that all Iqiow,
but also it will be clearly explained.*

‘I will do that to which I am assigned,’ Anselmo said. ‘But re-
membering the shooting in Segovia, if there is to be a battle or
even much exchanging of shots, I would wish to have it very clear
what I must do under all circumstances to avoid running. I re-
member that I had a great tendency to run at Segovia.’

‘We will be together,’ Robert Jordan told him. ‘I will tell you
what there is to do at all times.’

‘Then there is no problem,’ Anselmo said. ‘I can do anything
that I am ordered.’

‘For us will be the bridge and the battle, should there be one,’

44

Robert Jordan said and saying it in the dark, he felt a little
theatrical but it sounded well in Spanish.

‘It should be of the highest interest/ Anselmo said and hearing
him say it honestly and clearly and with no pose, neither the Eng-
lish pose of understatement nor any Latin bravado, Robert Jor-
dan thought he was very lucky to have this old man and having
seen the bridge and worked out and simplified the problem it
would have been to surprise the posts and blow it in a normal
way, he resented Golz’s orders, and the necessity for them. He
resented them for what they could do to him and for what they
could do to this old man. They were bad orders all right for those
who would have to carry them out.

And that is not the way to think, he told himself, and there is
not you, and there are no people that things must not happen to.
Neither you nor this old man is anything. You are instruments to
do your duty. There are necessary orders that are no fault of yours
and there is a bridge and that bridge can be the point on which the
future of the -human race can turn. As it can turn on everything
that happens in this war. You have only one thing to do and you
must do it. Only one thing, hell, he thought. If it were one thing
it was easy. Stop worrying, you windy bastard, he said to himself.
Think about something else.

So he thought about the girl Maria, with her skin, the hair, and
the eyes all the same golden tawny brown, the hair a little darker
than the rest but it would be lighter as her skin tanned deeper, the
smooth skin, pale gold on the surface with a darkness underneath.
Smooth it would be, all of her body smooth, and she moved awk-
wardly as though there were something of her and about her that
embarrassed her as though it were visible, though it was not, but
only in her mind. And she blushed when he looked at her, and
she sitting, her hands clasped around her knees, and the shirt open
at the throat, the cup of her breasts uptilted against the shirt, and
as he thought of her, his throat was choky and there was a diffi-
culty in walking and he and Anselmo spoke no more until the old
man said, ‘Now we go down through these rocks and to the
camp/

As they came through the rocks in the dark, a man spoke to
them. ‘Halt. Who goes?* They heard a rifle bolt snick as it was
drawn back and: then the knock against the wood as it was pushed
forward and down on the stock.

45

‘Comrades/ Anselmo said.

‘What comrades?’

‘Comrades of Pablo/ the old man told him. ‘Dost thou not
know us?’

‘Yes/ the voice said. ‘But it is an order. Have you the pass-
word?’

‘No. We come from below.’

‘I know/ the man said in the dark. ‘You come from the bridge.
1 know all of that. The order is not mine. You must know the
second half of a password.’

‘What is the first half then?’ Robert Jordan said.

‘I have forgotten it/ the man said in the dark and laughed. ‘Go
then unprintably to the campfire with thy obscene dynamite.’

‘That is called a guerrilla discipline/ Anselmo said. ‘Uncock thy
piece.*

‘It is uncocked/ the man said in the dark. ‘I let it down with
my thumb and forefinger.’

‘Thou wilt do that with a Mauser sometime which has no knurl
on the bolt and it will fire.’

‘This is a Mauser/ the man said. ‘But I have a grip of thumb
and forefinger beyond description. Always I let it down that
way.’

‘Where is the rifle pointed?’ asked Anselmo into the dark.

‘At thee/ the man said, ‘all the time that I descended the bolt.
And when thou comest to the camp, order that someone should
relieve me because I have indescribable and unprintable hunger
and I have forgotten the password/

‘How art thou called?’ Robert Jordan asked.

‘Agustm/ the man said. ‘I am called Agustin and I am dying
with boredom in this spot.*

‘We will take the message/ Robert Jordan said and he thought
how the word aburmiento which means boredom in Spanish was
a word no peasant would use in any other language. Yet it is one
of the most common words in the mouth of a Spaniard of any
class.

‘Listen to me/ Agustfn said, and coming close he put his hand
on Robert Jordan’s shoulder. Then striking a flint and steel to-
gether he held it up and, blowing on the end of the cork, looked
at the young man’s face in its glow.

‘You look like the other one/ he said. ‘But something different.

46

Listen,’ he put the lighter down and stood holding his rifle. ‘Tell
me this. Is it true about the bridge? *

‘What afeout the bridge ? ’

‘That we blow up an ‘obscene bridge and then have to obscenely
well obscenity ourselves off out of these mountains? ’

‘I know not.’

‘ You know not,’ Agustin said. ‘What a barbarity { Whose then
is the dynamite?’

‘Mine.’

‘And knowest thou not what it is for? Don’t tell me tales.’

‘I know what it is for and so will you in time,’ Robert Jordan
said. ‘But now we go to the camp.’

‘Go to the unprintable,’ Agustin said. ‘And unprint thyself. But
do you want me to tell you something of service to you?’

‘Yes,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘If it is not unprintable,’ naming the
principal obscenity that had larded the conversation. The man,
Agustin, spoke so obscenely, coupling an obscenity to every noun
as an adjective, using the same obscenity as a verb, that Robert
Jordan wondered if he could speak a straight sentence. Agustin
laughed in the dark when he heard the word. ‘It is a way of speak-
ing I have. Maybe it is ugly. Who knows? Each one speaks ac-
cording to his manner. Listen to me. The bridge is nothing to me.
As well the bridge as another thing. Also I have a boredom in
these mountains. That we should go if it is needed. These moun-
tains say nothing to me. That we should leave them. But I would
say one thing. Guard well thy explosive.’

‘Thank you,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘From thee?’

‘No,’ Agustin said. ‘From people less unprintably equipped
than I.’

‘So?’ asked Robert Jordan.

‘You understand Spanish,’ Agustin said seriously now. ‘Care
well for thy unprintable explosive.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No. Don’t thank me. Look after thy stuff.*

‘Has anything happened to it?’

‘No, or I would not waste thy time talking in this fashion.’

‘Thank you all the same. We go now to camp.’

‘Good,’ said Agustin, ‘and that they send someone here who
knows the password.’

‘Will we see you at the camp ? ’

47

‘Yes, man. And shortly.’

‘Come on,’ Robert Jordan said to Anselmo.

They were walking down the edge of the meadow now and
there was a grey mist. The grass was lush underfoot af&r the pine-
needle floor of the forest and the dew on the grass wet through
their canvas rope-soled shoes. Ahead, through the trees, Robert
Jordan could see a light where he knew the mouth of the cave
must be.

‘Agustin is a very good man,* Anselmo said. ‘He speaks very
filthily and always in jokes but he is a very serious man.*

‘You know him well? *

‘Yes. For a long time. I have much confidence in him.*

‘And what he says ? ’

‘Yes, man. This Pablo is bad now, as you could see.’

‘And the best thing to do ? *

‘One shall guard it at all times.’

‘Who?*

‘You. Me. The woman and Agustin. Since he sees the danger.*
‘Did you think things were as bad as they are here ? ’

‘No,’ Anselmo said. ‘They have gone bad very fast. But it was
necessary to come here. This is the country of Pablo and of El
Sordo. In their country we must deal with them unless it is some-
thing that can be done alone.*

‘And El Sordo?*

‘Good,* Anselmo said. ‘As good as the other is bad.*

‘ Y ou believe now that he is truly bad ? *

‘All afternoon I have thought of it and since we have heard
what we have heard, I think now, yes. Truly.’

‘It would not be better to leave, speaking of another bridge, and
obtain men from other bands ? *

‘No,* Anselmo said. ‘This is his country. You could not move
that he would not know it. But one must move with much pre-
cautions.*

48

CHAPTER 4

They came down to the mouth of the cave, where a light shone
out from the edge of a blanket that hung over the opening. The
two packs were at the foot of the tree covered with a canvas and
Robert Jordan knelt down and felt the canvas wet and stiff over
them. In the dark he felt under the canvas in the outside pocket of
one of the packs and took out a leather-covered flask and slipped
it in his pocket. Unlocking the long barred padlocks that passed
through the grummet that closed the opening of the mouth of the
packs, and untying the drawstring at the top of each pack, he
felt inside them and verified their contents with his hands. Deep
in one pack he felt the bundled blocks in the sacks, the sacks
wrapped in the sleeping robe, and tying the strings of that and
pushing the lock shut again, he put his hands into the other and
felt the sharp wood outline of the box of the old exploder, the
cigar box with the caps, each litde cylinder wrapped round and
round with its two wires (the lot of them packed as carefully as
he had packed his collection of wild bird eggs when he was a
boy), the stock of the sub-machine gun, disconnected from the
barrel and wrapped in his leather Jacket, the two pans and five
clips in one of the inner pockets of the big pack-sack and the small
coils of copper wire and the big coil of light insulated wire in the
other. In the pocket with the wire he felt his pliers and the two
wooden awls for making holes in the end of the blocks and then,
from the last inside pocket, he took a big box of the Russian
cigarettes of the lot he had from Golz’s headquarters and tying
the mouth of the pack shut, he pushed the lock in, buckled the
flaps down and again covered both packs with the canvas.
Anselmo had gone on into the cave.

Robert Jordan stood up to follow him, then reconsidered and,
lifting the canvas off the two packs, picked them up, one in each
hand, and started with them, just able to carry them, for the
mouth of the cave. He laid one pack down and lifted the blanket
aside, then with his head stooped and with a pack in each hand,
carrying by the leather shoulder straps, he went into the cave.

49

It was warm and smoky in the cave. There was a table along
one Wall with a tallow candle stuck in a bottle on it and at the
table were seated Pablo, three men he did not know, and the
gipsy, Rafael. The candle made shadows on the wall behind the
men and Anselmo stood where he had come in to the right of the
table. The wife of Pablo was standing over the charcoal lire on
the open fire hearth in the corner of the cave. The girl knelt by
her stirring in an iron pot. She lifted the wooden spoon out and
looked at Robert Jordan as he stood there in the doorway and he
saw, in the glow from the lire the woman was blowing with a
bellows, the girl’s face, her arm, and the drops running down
from the spoon and dropping into the iron pot.

‘What do you carry?’ Pablo said.

‘My things,’ Robert Jordan said and set the two packs down a
little way apart where the cave opened out on the side away from
the table.

‘Are they not well outside?’ Pablo asked.

‘Someone might trip over them in the dark,’ Robert Jordan said
and walked over to the table and laid the box of cigarettes on it.

‘1 do not like to have dynamite here in the cave,’ Pablo said.

‘It is far from the fire,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Take some cigar-
ettes.’ He ran his thumbnail along the side of the paper box with
the big coloured figure of a warship on the cover and pushed the
box toward Pablo.

Anselmo brought him a rawhide-covered stool and he sat down
at the table. Pablo looked at him as though he were going to speak
again, then reached for the cigarettes.

Robert Jordan pushed them toward the others. He was not
looking at them yet. But he noted one man took cigarettes and
two did not. All of his concentration was on Pablo.

‘How goes it, gipsy?’ he said to Rafael.

‘Good,’ the gipsy said. Robert Jordan could tell they had been
talking about him when he came in. Even the gipsy was not at
ease.

‘She is going to let you eat again?’ Robert Jordan asked the

gip s y*

‘Yes. Why not?’ the gipsy said. It was a long way from the
friendly joking they had together in the afternoon.

The woman of Pablo said nothing and went on blowing up the
coals pf the lire.

50

‘One called Agustfn says he dies of boredom above,’ Robert
Jordan said.

‘That doesn’t kill,* Pablo said. ‘Let him die a little.’

‘Is there wine?’ Robert Jordan asked the table at large, leaning
forward, his hands on the table.

‘There is little left,’ Pablo said sullenly. Robert Jordan decided
he had better look at the other three and try to see where he stood.

‘In that case, let me have a cup of water. Thou,’ he called to the
girl. ‘Bring me a cup of water.’

The girl looked at the woman, who said nothing, and gave no
sign of having heard, then she went to a kettle containing water
and dipped a cup full. She brought it to the table and put it down
before him. Robert Jordan smiled at her. At the same time he
sucked in on his stomach muscles and swung a little to the left
on his stool so that his pistol slipped around on his belt closer to
where he wanted it. He reached his hand down toward his hip
pocket and Pablo watched him. He knew they all were watching
him, too, but he watched only Pablo. His hand came up from the
hip pocket with the leather-covered flask and he unscrewed the
top and then, lifting the cup, drank half the water and poured
very slowly from the flask into the cup.

‘It is too strong for thee or I would give thee some,’ he said to
the girl and smiled at her again. ‘There is little left or I would
offer some to thee,’ he said to Pablo.

‘I do not like anis,’ Pablo said.

The acrid smell had carried across the table and he had picked
out the one familiar component.

‘Good,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘Because there is very little left.’

‘What drink is that?’ the gipsy asked.

‘A medicine,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Do you want to taste it?’

‘What is it for?’

‘For everything,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘It cures everything. If
you have anything wrong this will cure it.’

‘Let me taste it,’ the gipsy said.

Robert Jordan pushed the cup toward him. It was a milky
yellow now with the water and he hoped the gipsy would not take
more than a swallow. There was very little left and one cup of it
took the place of the evening papers, of all the old evenings in
cafes, of all chestnut trees that would be in bloom now in this
month, of the great slow horses of the outer boulevards, of book

5i

shops, of kiosks, and of galleries, of the Parc Montsouris, of the
Stade Buffalo, and of the Butte Chaumont, of the Guaranty Trust
Company and the lie de la Cite, of Foyot’s old hotel, and of being
able to read and relax in the evening; of all the things he had en-
joyed and forgotten and that came back to him when he tasted
that opaque, bitter, tongue-numbing, brain- warming, stomach-
warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy.

The gipsy made a face and handed the cup back. ‘It smells of
anis but it is bitter as gall,’ he said. ‘It is better to be sick than
have that medicine.’

‘That’s the wormwood,’ Robert Jordan told him. ‘In this, the
real absinthe, there is wormwood. It’s supposed to rot your brain
out but I don’t believe it. It only changes the ideas. You should
pour water into it very slowly, a few drops at a time. But I poured
it into the water.’

‘What are you saying?’ Pablo said angrily, feeling the mockery.

‘Explaining the medicine,’ Robert Jordan told him and grinned.
‘I bought it in Madrid. It was the last bottle and it’s lasted me
three weeks.’ He took a big swallow of it and felt it coasting over
his tongue in delicate anaesthesia. He looked at Pablo and
grinned again.

‘How’s business?’ he asked.

Pablo did not answer and Robert Jordan looked carefully at the
other three men at the table. One had a large flat face, flat and
brown as a Serrano ham with a nose flattened and broken, and
the long thin Russian cigarette, projecting at an angle, made the
face look even flatter. This man had short grey hair and a grey
stubble of beard and wore the usual black smock buttoned at the
neck. He looked down at the table when Robert Jordan looked at
him but his eyes were steady and they did not blink. The other
two were evidently brothers. They looked much alike and were
both short, heavily »built, dark-haired, their hair growing low on
their foreheads, dark-eyed, and brown. One had a scar across his
forehead above his left eye and as he looked at them, they looked
back at him steadily. One looked to be about twenty-six or eight,
the other perhaps two years older.

‘What are you looking at?’ one brother, the one with the scar,
asked,

‘Thee,* Robert Jordan said.

‘Do you see anything rare?’

5 2

‘No/ said Robert Jordan. ‘Have a cigarette?’

‘Why not?’ the brother said. He had not taken any before.
‘These are like the other hand. He of the train.’

‘Were you at the train?’

‘We were all at the train/ the brother said quietly. ‘All except
the old man.’

‘That is what we should do now/ Pablo said. ‘Another train/

‘We can do that/ Robert Jordan said. ‘After the bridge.’

He could see that the wife of Pablo had turned now from the
fire and was listening. When he said the word bridge everyone
was quiet.

‘After the bridge/ he said again deliberately, and took a sip of
the absinthe. I might as well bring it on, he thought. It’s coming
anyway.

‘I do not go for the bridge,’ Pablo said, looking down at the
table. ‘Neither me nor my people.’

Robert Jordan said nothing. Helooked at Anselmo and raised
the cup. ‘Then we shall do it alone, old one/ he said and smiled.

‘Without this coward/ Anselmo said.

‘What did you say?’ Pablo spoke to the old man.

‘Nothing for thee. I did not speak to thee/ Anselmo told him.

Robert Jordan now looked past the table to where the wife of
Pablo was standing by the fire. She had said nothing yet, nor
given any sign. But now she said something he could not hear to
the girl and the girl rose from the cooking fire, slipped along the
wall, opened the blanket that hung over the mouth of the cave,
and went out. I think it is going to come now, Robert Jordan
thought. I believe this is it. I did not want it to be this way but
this seems to be the way it is.

‘Then we will do the bridge without thy aid/ Robert Jordan
said to Pablo.

‘No/ Pablo said, and Robert Jordan watched his face sweat.
‘Thou wilt blow no bridge here.’

‘Thou wilt blow no bridge,* Pablo said heavily.

‘And thou?’ Robert Jordan spoke to the wife of Pablo who was
standing, still and huge, by the fire. She turned toward them and
said, ‘I am for the bridge.’ Her face was lit by the fire and it was
flushed and it shone warm and dark and handsome now in the
firelight as it was meant to be.

53

‘What do you say?’ Pablo said to her and Robert Jordan saw the
betrayed look on his face and the sweat on his forehead as he
turned his head.

‘I am for the bridge and against thee/ the wife of Pablo said.
‘Nothing more.’

‘I am also for the bridge/ the man with the flat face and the
broken nose said, crushing the end of the cigarette on the table.

‘To me the bridge means nothing/ one of the brothers said. ‘I
am for the mujer of Pablo/

‘Equally/ said the other brother.

‘Equally/ the gipsy said.

Robert Jordan, watching Pablo, and as he watched letting his
right hand hang lower and lower, ready if it should be necessary,
half-hoping it would be (feeling perhaps that were the simplest
and easiest yet not wishing to spoil what had gone so well, know-
ing how quickly all of a family, all of a clan, all of a band, can
turn against a stranger in a quarrel, yet thinking what could be
done with the hand were the simplest and best and surgically the
most sound now that this had happened), saw also the wife of
Pablo, standing there and watched her blush proudly and soundly
and healthily a*s the allegiances were given.

‘I am for the Republic/ the woman of Pablo said happily. ‘And
the Republic is the bridge. Afterwards we will have time for other
projects/

‘And thou/ Pablo said bitterly. ‘With your head of a seed bull
and your heart of a whore. Thou thinkest there will be an after-
wards from this bridge? Thou hast an idea of that which will
pass?’

‘That which must pass/ the woman of Pablo said. ‘That which
must pass, will pass/

‘And it means nothing to thee to be hunted then like a beast
after this thing from which we derive no profit? Nor to die
in it?*

‘Nothing/ the woman of Pablo said. ‘And do not try to frighten
me, coward/

‘Coward/ Pablo said bitterly. ‘You treat a man as coward be-
cause he has a tactical sense. Because he can see the results of an
idiocy in advance. It is not cowardly to know what is foolish/

‘Neither is it foolish to know what is cowardly/ said Anselmo,
unable to resist making the phrase.

54

‘Do you want to die?’ Pablo said to him seriously and Robert
Jordan saw how unrhetorical was the question.

‘No.*

‘Then watch thy mouth. You talk too much about things you
do not understand. Don’t you see that this is serious?’ he said
almost pitifully. ‘Am I the only one who sees the seriousness of
this?’

I believe so, Robert Jordan thought. Old Pablo, old boy, I be-
lieve so. Except me. You can see it and I see it and the woman
read it in my hand but she doesn’t see it, yet. Not yet she doesn’t
see it.

‘Am I a leader for nothing?’ Pablo asked. ‘I know what I
speak of. You others do not know. This old man talks nonsense.
He is an old man who is nothing but a messenger and a guide for
foreigners. This foreigner comes here to do a thing for the good
of the foreigners. For his good we must be sacrificed. I am for the
good and the safety of all.’

‘Safety,’ the wife of Pablo said. ‘There is no such thing as safety.
There are so many seeking safety here now that they make a great
danger. In seeking safety now you lose ail.’

She stood now by the table with the big spoon in her hand.

‘There is safety,’ Pablo said. ‘Within the danger there is
the safety of knowing what chances to take. It is like the bull-
fighter who knowing what he is doing takes no chances and is
safe.’

‘Until he is gored,’ the woman said bitterly. ‘How many times
have I heard matadors talk like that before they took a goring.
How often have I heard Finito say that it is all knowledge and
that the bull never gored the man; rather the man gored himself
on the horn of the bull. Always do they talk that way in their
arrogance before a goring. Afterwards we visit them in the clinic.’
Now she was mimicking a visit to a bedside. ‘ “Hello, old timer.
Hello,” ’ she boomed. Then, ‘ “ Buenas r Compadre . How goes it.
Pilar?” ’ imitating the weak voice of the wounded bullfighter.
‘ “How did this happen, Finito, Chico , how did this dirty accident
occur to thee?” ’ booming it out in her own voice. Then talking
weak and small. ‘ “It is nothing, woman. Pilar, it is nothing. It
shouldn’t have happened. I killed him very well, you understand.
Nobody could have killed him better. Then, having killed him
exactly as I should and him absolutely dead, swaying on his legs,

55

and ready to fall of his own weight, I walked away from him
with a certain amount of arrogance and much style and from the
back he throws me this horn between the cheeks of my buttocks
and it comes out of my liver.’* ’ She commenced to laugh, drop-
ping the imitation of the almost effeminate bullfighter’s voice
and booming again now. ‘You and your safety I Did I live nine
years with three of the worst-paid matadors in the world not to
learn about fear and about safety? Speak to me of anything but
safety. And thee. What illusions I put in thee and how they have
turned out! From one year of war thou hast become lazy, a
drunkard, and a coward.’

‘In that way thou hast no right to speak,’ Pablo said. ‘And less
even before the people and a stranger.’

‘In that way will I speak,’ the wife of Pablo went on. ‘Have
you not heard? Do you still believe that you command here?’

‘Yes,’ Pablo said. ‘Here I command.’

‘Not in joke,’ the woman said. ‘Here I command ! Haven’t you
heard la gente ? Here no one commands but me. You can stay if
you wish and eat of the food and drink of the wine, but not too
bloody much, and share in the work if thee wishes. But here I
command.’

‘I should shoot thee and the foreigner both,’ Pablo said sullenly.

‘Try it,’ the woman said. ‘And see what happens.’

‘A cup of water for me,’ Robert Jordan said, not taking his eyes
from the man with his sullen heavy head and the woman stand-
ing proudly and confidently holding the big spoon as authorita-
tively as though it were a baton.

‘Maria,’ called the woman of Pablo, and when the girl came in
the door she said, ‘Water for this comrade.’

Robert Jordan reached for his flask and, bringing the flask out,
as he brought it he loosened the pistol in the holster and swung it
on top of his thigh. He poured a second absinthe into his cup and
took the cup of water the girl brought him and commenced to
drip it into the cup, a little at a time. The girl stood at his elbow,
watching him.

‘Outside,’ the woman of Pablo said to her, gesturing with the
spoon.

‘It is cold outside,’ the girl said, her cheek close to Robert Jor-
dan’s, watching what was happening in the cup where the liquor
was clouding.

56

‘Maybe,’ the woman of Pablo said. ‘But in here it is too hot.”
Then she said, kindly, ‘It is not for long.’

The girl shook her head and went out.

I don’t think he is going to take this much more, Robert Jordan
thought to himself. He held the cup in one hand and his other
hand rested, frankly now, on the pistol. He had slipped the safety
catch and he felt the worn comfort of the checked grip chafed
almost smooth and touched the round, cool companiship of the
trigger guard. Pablo no longer looked at him but only at the
woman. She went on, ‘Listen to me, drunkard. You understand
who commands here?’

‘I command.’

‘No. Listen. Take the wax from thy hairy ears. Listen well. I
command.’

Pablo looked at her and you could tell nothing of what he was
thinking by his face. He looked at her quite deliberately and then
he looked across the table at Robert Jordan. He looked at him a
long time contemplatively and then he looked back at the woman
again.

‘All right. You command,* he said. ‘And if you want he can
command too. And the two of you can go to hell.’ He was look-
ing the woman straight in the face and he was neither dominated
by her nor seemed to be much affected by her. ‘It is possible that I
am lazy and that I drink too much. You may consider me a
coward but there you are mistaken. But I am not stupid,’ He
paused. ‘That you should command and that you should like it.
Now if you are a woman as well as a commander, that we should
have something to eat.’

‘Maria,’ the woman of Pablo called.

The girl put her head inside the blanket across the cave mouth. ,
‘Enter now and serve the supper.*

The girl came in and walked across to the low table by the
hearth and picked up the enamelled-ware bowls and brought
them to the table.

‘There is wine enough for all,’ the woman of Pablo said to
Robert Jordan. ‘Pay no attention to what that drunkard says.
When this is finished we will get more. Finish that rare thing
thou art drinking and take a cup of wine.’

Robert Jordan swallowed down the last of the absinthe, feeling
it, gulped that way, making a warm, small, fume-rising, wet,

57

chemical-change-producing heat in him and passed the cup for
wine. The girl dipped it full for him and smiled.

‘Well, did you see the bridge?’ the gipsy asked. The others, who
had not opened their mouths after the change of allegiance, were
all leaning forward to listen now.

‘Yes/ Robert Jordan said. ‘It is something easy to do. Would
you like me to show you? ’

‘Yes, man. With much interest.’

Robert Jordan took out the notebook from his shirt pocket and
showed them the sketches.

‘Look how it seems,’ the flat-faced man, who was named Primi-
tivo, said. ‘It, is the bridge itself.’

Robert Jordan with the point of the pencil explained how the
bridge should be blown and the reason for the placing of the
charges.

‘What simplicity/ the scarred-faced brother, who was called
Andres, said. ‘And how do you explode them?’

Robert Jordan explained that too and, as he showed them, he
felt the girl’s arm resting on his shoulder as he looked. The
woman of Pablo was watching too. Only Pablo took no interest,
sitting by himself with a cup of wine that he replenished by dip-
ping into the big bowl Maria had filled from the wine skin that
hung to the left of the entrance to the cave.

‘Hast thou done much of this?’ the girl asked Robert Jordan
softly.

‘Yes.’

‘And can we see the doing of it? ’

‘Yes. Why not?’

‘You will see it/ Pablo said from his end of the table. ‘I believe
that you will see it.’

‘Shut up/ the woman of Pablo said to him and, suddenly re-
membering what she had seen in the hand in the afternoon, she
was wildly, unreasoningly angry. ‘Shut up, coward. Shut up, bad
luck bird. Shut up, murderer.’

‘Good/ Pablo said. ‘I shut up. It is thou who commands now
and you should continue to look at the pretty pictures. But re-
member that I am not stupid.’

The woman of Pablo could feel her rage changing to sorrow
and to a feeling of the thwarting of all hope and promise. She
knew this feeling from when she was a girl and she knew the

58

things that caused it all through her life. It came now suddenly*
and she put it away from her and would not let it touch her,
neither her nor the Republic, and she said, “Now we will eat.
Serve the bowls from the pot, Maria.’

CHAPTER 5

Robert Jordan pushed aside the saddle blanket that hung over
the mouth of the cave and, stepping out, took a deep breath of
the cold night air. The mist had cleared away and the stars were
out. There was no wind, and, outside now of the warm air of the
cave, heavy with smoke of both tobacco and charcoal, with the
odour of cooked rice and meat, saffron, pimentos, and oil, the
tarry, wine-spilled smell of the big skin hung beside the door,
hung by the neck and the four legs extended, wine drawn from a
plug fitted in one leg, wine that spilled a little on to the earth of
the door, settling the dust smell; out now from the odours of dif-
ferent herbs whose names he did not know that hung in bunches
from the ceiling, with long ropes of garlic, away now from the
copper-penny, red wine and garlic, horse sweat and man sweat
dried in the clothing (acrid and grey the man sweat, sweet and
sickly the dried brushed-off lather of horse sweat), of the men at
the table, Robert Jordan breathed deeply of the clear night air of
the mountains that smelled of the pines and of the dew on the
grass in the meadow by the stream. Dew had fallen heavily since
the wind had dropped, but, as he stood there, he thought there
would be frost by morning.

As he stood breathing deep and then listening to the night, he
heard first, firing far away, and then he heard an owl cry in the
timber below, where the horse corral was slung. Then inside the
cave he could hear the gipsy starting to sing and the soft chord-
ing of a guitar.

‘I had an inheritance from my father,’ the artificially hardened
voice rose harshly and hung there. Then went on :

*It was the moon and the sun

And though I roam nail over the world

The spending of it’s never done.’

59

The guitar thudded with chorded applause for the singer.
‘Good/ Robert Jordan heard someone say, ‘Give us the Catalan,
gipsy/

‘No/

‘Yes. Yes. The Catalan/

‘All right/ the gipsy said and sang mournfully :

‘My nose is flat,

My face is black,

But still I am a man.’

‘Ole !’ someone said. ‘Go on, gipsy !’

The gipsy’s voice rose tragically and mockingly :

‘Thank God I am a Negro,

And not a Catalan I *

‘There is much noise/ Pablo’s voice said. ‘Shut up, gipsy/

‘Yes/ he heard the woman’s voice. ‘There is too much noise.
You could call the guardia civil with that voice and still it has no
quality.’

‘I know another verse/ the gipsy said and the guitar com-
menced.

‘Save it/ the worp.an told him.

The guitar stopped.

T am not good in voice to-night. So there is no loss/ the gipsy
said and pushing the blanket aside he came out into the dark.

Robert Jordan watched him walk over to a tree and then come
toward him,

‘Roberto/ the gipsy said softly.

‘Yes, Rafael/ he said. He knew the gipsy had been affected by
the wine from his voice. He himself had drunk the two absinthes
and some wine but his head was clear and cold from the strain of
the difficulty with Pablo.

‘Why didst thou not kill Pablo?’ the gipsy said very softly.

‘Why kill him?’

‘You have to kill him sooner or later. Why did you not approve
of the moment?’ 1

‘Do you speak seriously?’ '

‘What do you think that all waited for? What do you think the
woman sent the girl away for?, Do you believe that it is possible to
continue after what has been said? ’

60

‘That you all should kill him.’

c Que va / the gipsy said quietly. ‘That is your business. Three
or four times we waited for you to kill him? Pablo has no friends.’

‘I had the idea/ Robert Jordan said. ‘But I left it.’

‘Surely all could see that. Everyone noted your preparations.
Why didn’t you do it?’

‘I thought it might molest you others or the woman.’

‘ QuS va. And the woman waiting as a whore waits for the flight
of the big bird. Thou art younger than thou appearest.’

‘It is possible.’

‘Kill him now/ the gipsy urged.

‘That is to assassinate/

‘Even better/ the gipsy said very softly. ‘Less danger. Go on.
Kill him now.’

‘I cannot in that way. It is repugnant to me and it is not how
one should act for the cause/

‘Provoke him then/ the gipsy said. ‘But you have to kill him.
There is no remedy/

As they spoke, the owl flew between the trees with the softness
of all silence, dropping past them, then rising, the wings beating
quickly, but with no noise of feathers moving as the bird hunted.

‘Look at him/ the gipsy said in the dark. ‘Thus should men
move/

‘And in the day, blind in a tree with crows around him/ Robert
Jordan said.

‘Rarely/ said the gipsy. ‘And then by hazard. Kill him/ he
went on. ‘Do not let it become difficult.’

‘Now the moment is passed.’

‘Provoke it/ the gipsy said. ‘Or take advantage of the quiet/”

The blanket that closed the cave door opened and light came
out. Someone came toward where they stood, f

‘It is a beautiful night/ the man said in a heavy, dull voice. ‘We
will have good weather/

It was Pablo.

He was smoking one of the Russian cigarettes and in the glow,
as he drew on the cigarette, his round face showed. They could
see his heavy, long-armed body in the starlight.

‘Do not pay any attention to the woman/ he said to Robert
Jordan. In the dark the cigarette glowed bright, then showed In
his hand as he lowered it. ‘She is difficult sometimes. She is a good

61

woman. Very loyal to the Republic.’ The light of the cigarette
jerked slightly now as he spoke. He must be talking with it in the
corner of his mouth, Rbbert Jordan thought. ‘We should have no
difficulties. We are of accord. I am glad you have come.’ The
cigarette glowed brighdy. ‘Pay no attention to arguments/ he
said. ‘You are very welcome here.’

‘Excuse me now/ he said. ‘I go to see how they have picketed
the horses/

He went off through the trees to the edge of the meadow and
they heard a horse whinny from below.

‘You see?’ the gipsy said. ‘Now you see? In this way has the
moment escaped/

Robert Jordan said nothing.

‘I go down there/ the gipsy said angrily.

‘To do what ? 9

‘ Que va, to do what. At least to prevent him leaving/

‘Can he leave with a horse from below ? 9

‘No . 9

‘Then go to the spot where you can prevent him/

‘Agustin is there . 9

‘Go then and speak with Agustin, Tell him that which has hap-
pened.’

‘Agustin will kill him with pleasure/

‘Less bad/ Robert Jordan said. ‘Go then above and tell him all
as it happened.’

‘And then ? 9

‘I go to look below in the meadow . 9

‘Good. Man. Good/ he could not see Rafael’s face in the dark
but he could feel him smiling. ‘Now you have tightened your
garters/ the gipsy said approvingly.

‘Go to Agustin/ Robert Jordan said to him.

‘Yes, Roberto, yes,’ said the gipsy.

Robert Jordan walked through the pines, feeling his way from
tree to tree to the edge of the meadow. Looking across it in the
darkness, lighter here in the open from the starlight, he saw the
dark bulks of the picketed horses. He counted them where they
were scattered between him and the stream. There were five.
Robrt Jordan sat down at the foot of a pine tree and looked out
across the meadow.

I am tired, he thought, and perhaps my judgement is not good.

62

But my obligation is the bridge, and to fulfil that I must take no
useless risk of myself until I complete that duty. Of course it is
sometimes more of a risk not to accept chances which are neces-
sary to take, but I have done this so far, trying to let the situation
take its own course. If it is true, as the gipsy says, that they ex-
pected me to kill Pablo then I should have done that. But it was
never clear to me that they did expect that. For a stranger to kill
where he must work with the people afterwards is very bad. It
may be done in action, and it may be done if backed by sufficient
discipline, but in this case I think it would be very bad, although
it was a temptation and seemed a short and simple way. But I do
not believe anything is that short or that simple in this country
and, while I trust the woman absolutely, I could not tell how she
would react to such a drastic thing. One dying in such a place can
be very ugly, dirty, and repugnant. You could not tell how she
would react. Without the woman there is no organization nor any
discipline here and with the woman it can be very good. It would
be ideal if she would kill him, or if the gipsy would (but he will
not), or if the sentry, Agustin, would. Anselmo will if I ask it,
though he says he is against all killing. He hates him, I believe,
and he already trusts me and believes in me as a representative of
what he believes in. Only he and the woman really believe in the
Republic as far as I can see; but it is too early to know that yet.

As his eyes became used to the starlight he could see that Pablo
was standing by one of the horses. The horse lifted his head from
grazing; then dropped it impatiently. Pablo was standing by the
horse, leaning against him, moving with him as he swung with
the length of the picket rope and patting him on the neck. The
horse was impatient at the tenderness while lie was feeding.
Robert Jordan could not see what Pablo was doing, nor hear what
he was saying to the horse, but he could see that he was neither
unpicketing nor saddling. He sat watching him, trying to think
his problem out clearly.

‘Thou my big good little pony/ Pablo was saying to the horse
in the dark; it was the big bay stallion he was speaking to. ‘Thou
lovely white-faced big beauty. Thou with the big neck arching
like the viaduct of my pueblo,’ he stopped. ‘But arching more and
much finer.’ The horse was snatching grass, swinging his head
sideways as he pulled, annoyed by the man and his talking. ‘Thou
art no woman nor a fool,’ Pablo told the bay horse. ‘Thou, oh,

63

thou, thee, thee, my big little pony. Thou art no woman like a
rock that is burning. Thou art no colt of a girl with cropped head
and the movement of a foal still wet from its mother. Thou dost
not insult nor lie nor not understand. Thou, oh, thee, oh my good
big little pony.*

It would have been very interesting for Robert Jordan to have
heard Pablo speaking to the bay horse but he did not hear him
because now, convinced that Pablo was only down checking on
his horses, and having decided that it was not a practical move to
kill him at this time, he stood up and walked back to the cave.
Pablo stayed in the meadow talking to the horse for a long time.
The horse understood nothing that he said; only, from the tone of
the voice, that they were endearments and he had been in the
corral all day and was hungry now, grazing impatiently at the
limits of his picket rope, and the man annoyed him. Pablo shifted
the picket pin finally and stood by the horse, not talking now. The
horse went on grazing and was relieved now that the man did not
bother him.

CHAPTER 6

Inside the cave, Robert Jordan sat on one of the rawhide stools
in a corner by the fire, listening to the woman. She was washing
the dishes and the girl, Maria, was drying them and putting them
away, kneeling to place them in the hollow dug in the wall that
was used as a shelf.

‘It is strange,’ she said, ‘that El Sordo has not come. He should
have been here an hour ago.’

‘Did you advise him to come?’

‘No. He comes each night.’

‘Perhaps he is doing something. Some work.’

‘It is possible,’ she said, ‘If he does not come we must go to see
him to-morrow.’

‘Yes. Is it far from here?’

‘No. It will be a good trip. I lack exercise.’

‘Can I go?’ Maria asked. ‘May I go too, Pilar?’

‘Yes, beautiful,’ the woman said, then turning her big face,
‘Isn’t she pretty?’ she asked Robert Jordan. ‘How does she seem
to thee? A little thin?’

64

‘To me she seems very well/ Robert Jordan said. Maria filled his
cup with wine. ‘Drink that,’ she said. ‘It will make me seem even
better. It is necessary to drink much of that for me to seem beau-
tiful.’

‘Then I had better stop,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Already thou
seemest beautiful and more.’

‘That’s the way to talk,’ the woman said. ‘You talk like the good
ones. What more does she seem?’

‘Intelligent,’ Robert Jordan said lamely. Maria giggled and the
woman shook her head sadly. ‘How well you begin and how it
ends, Don Roberto.’

‘Don’t call me Don Roberto.’

‘It is a joke. Here we say Don Pablo for a joke. As we say the
Sehorita Maria for a joke.’

‘I don’t joke that way,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Camarada to me is
what all should be called with seriousness in this war. In the
joking commences a rottenness.’

‘Thou art very religious about thy politics,’ the woman teased
him. ‘Thou makest no jokes?’

‘Yes. I care much for jokes but not in the form of address. It is
like a flag,’

‘I could make jokes about a flag. Any flag,’ the woman laughed.
‘To me no one can joke of anything. The old flag of yellow and
gold we called pus and blood. The flag of the Republic with the
purple added we call blood, pus, and permanganate. It is a
joke.’

‘He is a communist,’ Maria said. ‘They are very serious gente .’

‘Are you a communist?’

‘No, I am an anti-fascist.’

‘For a long time?’

‘Since I have understood fascism/

‘How long is that?’

‘For nearly ten years.*

‘That is not much time,’ the woman said. ‘I have been a repub-
lican for twenty years.’

‘My father was a republican all his life,’ Maria said. ‘It was for
that they shot him.’

‘My father was also a republican all his life. Also my grand-
father,’ Robert Jordan said.

Tn what country?’

65

‘The United States.’

‘Did they shoot them?’ the woman asked.

c Que va ,’ Maria said. ‘The United States is a country o£ repub-
licans. They don’t shoot you for being a republican there.’

‘All the same it is a good thing to have a grandfather who was
a republican,’ the woman said. ‘It shows a good blood.’

‘My grandfather was on the Republican national committee,*
Robert Jordan said. That impressed even Maria.

‘And is thy father still active in the Republic?’ Pilar asked.

‘No. He is dead.’

‘Can one ask how he died? ’

‘He shot himself.’

‘To avoid being tortured?’ the woman asked.

‘Yes,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘To avoid being tortured.’

Maria looked at him with tears in her eyes. ‘My father,’ she
said, ‘could not obtain a weapon. Oh, I am very glad that your
father had the good fortune to obtain a weapon.’

‘Yes. It was pretty lucky,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Should we talk
about something else?’

‘Then you and me we are the same,’ Maria said. She put her
hand on his arm and looked in his face. He looked at her brown
face and at the eyes that, since he had seen them, had never been
as young as the rest of her face but that now were suddenly hungry
and young and wanting.

‘You could be brother and sister by the look,’ the woman said.
‘But I believe it is fortunate that you are not.’

‘Now I know why I have felt as I have,’ Maria said. ‘Now it is
clear.’

l Que va ,’ Robert Jordan said and reaching over, he ran his hand
over the top of her head. He had been wanting to do that all day,
and now he did it, he could feel his throat swelling. She moved
her head under his hand and smiled up at him and he felt the
thick but silky rougimess of the cropped head rippling between
his fingers. Then his hand was on her neck and then he dropped
it.

‘Do it again,’ she said. ‘I wanted you to do that all day.’

‘Later,’ Robert Jordan said and his voice was thick.

‘And me,’ the woman of Pablo said in her booming voice, ‘I am
expected to watch all this? I am expected not to be moVed? One
cannot. For fault of anything better; that Pablo should comeback.*

66

Maria took no notice of her now, nor of the others playing cards
at the table by the candlelight.

‘Do you want another cup of wine, Roberto?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

‘You’re going to have a drunkard like I have,’ the woman of
Pablo said. ‘With that rare thing he drank in the cup and all. Lis-
ten to me, Ingles.'

‘Not Ingles . American.’

‘Listen, then, American. Where do you plan to sleep?*

‘Outside. I have a sleeping robe.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘The night is clear?’

‘And will be cold.’

‘Outside then,’ she said. ‘Sleep thee outside. And thy materials
can sleep with me.’

‘Good/ said Robert Jordan.

‘Leave us for a moment,’ Robert Jordan said to the girl and put
his hand on her shoulder.

‘Why?’

‘I wish to speak to Pilar.’

‘Must I go?’

‘Yes.’

‘What is it?* the woman of Pablo said when the girl had gone
over to the mouth of the cave where she stood by the big wine-
skin, watching the card players.

‘The gipsy said I should have — ’ he began.

‘No/ the woman interrupted. ‘He is mistaken.’

‘If it is necessary that I — ’ Robert Jordan said quietly but with
difficulty.

‘Thee would have done it, I believe/ the woman said. ‘Nay, it
is not necessary. I was watching thee. But thy judgement was
good.’

‘But if it is needful — ’

‘No,’ the woman said. ‘I tell you it is not needful. The mind of
the gipsy is corrupt.*

‘But in weakness a man can be a great danger.’

‘No. Thou dost not understand. Out of this one has passed all
capacity for danger.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Thou art very young still/ she said. ‘You will understand.’
Then, to the girl, ‘Come, Maria. We are not talking more.’

67

The girl came over and Robert Jordan reached his hand out
and patted her head. She stroked under his hand like a kitten.
Then he thought that she was going to cry. But her lips drew up
again and she looked at him and smiled.

‘Thee would do well to go to bed now,’ the woman said to
Robert Jordan. ‘Thou hast had a long journey.’

‘Good,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘I will get my things.’

CHAPTER 7

He was asleep in the robe and he had been asleep, he thought, for
a long time. The robe was spread on the forest floor in the lee of
the rocks beyond the cave mouth and as he slept, he turned, and
turning rolled on his pistol which was fastened by a lanyard to
one wrist and had been by his side under the cover when he went
to sleep, shoulder and back-weary, leg-tired, his muscles pulled
with tiredness so that the ground was soft, and simply stretching
in the robe against the flannel lining was voluptuous with fatigue.
Waking, he wondered where he was, knew, and then shifted the
pistol from under his side and setded happily to stretch back into
sleep, his hand on the pillow of his clothing that was bundled
neatly around his rope-soled shoes. He had one arm around the
pillow.

Then he felt her hand on his shoulder and turned quickly, his
right hand holding the pistol under the robe.

‘Oh, it is thee,’ he said and dropping the pistol he reached both
arms up and pulled her down. With his arms around her he could
feel her shivering.

‘Get in,’ he said softly, ‘It is cold put there.’

‘No. I must not.’

‘Get in,’ he said. ‘And we can talk about it later.’

She was trembling;* and he held her wrist now with one hand
and held her lightly with the other arm. She had turned her head
away.

‘Get in, little rabbit,’ he said and kissed her on the back of the
neck.

‘I am afraid.*

‘No. Do not be afraid. Get in.’

68

‘How?’

‘Just slip in. There is much room. Do you want me to help
you?’

‘No/ she said and then she was in the robe and he was holding
her tight to him and trying to kiss her lips and she was pressing
her face against the pillow of clothing but holding her arms close
around his neck. Theft he felt her arms relax and she was shiver-
ing again as he held her.

‘No/ he said and laughed. ‘Do not be afraid. That is the pistol/
He lifted it and slipped it behind him.

‘I am ashamed/ she said, her face away from him.

‘No. You must not be. Here. Now.’

‘No, I must not. I am ashamed and frightened.*

‘No. My rabbit. Please.’

‘I must not. If thou dost not love me/

‘I love thee/

‘I love thee. Oh, I love thee. Put thy hand on my head/ she said
away from him, her face still in the pillow. He put his hand on
her head and stroked it and then suddenly her face was away
from the pillow and she was in his arms, pressed close against
him, and her face was against his and she was crying.

He held her still and close, feeling the long length of the young
body, and he stroked her head and kissed the wet saltiness of her
eyes, and as she cried he could feel the rounded, firm-pointed
breasts touching through the shirt she wore.

‘I cannot kiss/ she said. ‘I do not know how/

‘There is no need to kiss/

‘Yes. I must kiss. I must do everything/

‘There is no need to do anything. We are all right. But thou
hast many clothes/

‘What should I do?’

‘I will help you.*

‘Is that better?*

‘Yes. Much. Is it not better to thee?*

‘Yes. Much better. And I can go with thee as Pilar said?*

‘Yes/

‘But not to a home. With thee.’

‘No, to a home/

‘No. No. No. With thee and I will be thy woman/

Now as they lay all that before had been shielded was un-

69

shielded. Where there had been roughness of fabric all was
smooth with a smoothness and firm rounded pressing and a long
warm coolness, cool outside and warm within, long and light and
closely holding, closely held, lonely, hollow-making with con-
tours, happy-making, young and loving and now all warmly
smooth with a hollowing, chest-aching, tight-held loneliness that
was such that Robert Jordan felt he could not stand it and he said,
‘Hast thou loved others?’

‘Never.’

Then suddenly, going dead in his arms, ‘But things were done
to me.’

‘By whom?’

‘By various.’

Now she lay perfectly quietly and as though her body were
dead and turned her head away from him.

‘Now you will not love me.’

‘I love you,’ he said.

But something had happened to him and she knew it.

‘No,’ she said and her voice had gone dead and flat. ‘Thou wilt
not love me. But perhaps thou wilt take me to the home. And I
will go to the home and I will never be thy woman nor anything.’

‘I love thee, Maria.’

‘No. It is not true,’ she said. Then as a last thing pitifully and
hopefully :

‘But I have never kissed any man.’

‘Then kiss me now.’

‘I wanted to,’ she said. ‘But I know not how. Where things were
done to me I fought until I could not see. I fought until — until -
until one sat upon my head - and I bit him - and then they tied
my mouth and held my arms behind my head — and others did
things to me.’

‘I love thee, Maria,’ he said. ‘And no one has done anything to
thee. Thee, they cannot touch. No one has touched thee, little
rabbit.’

‘You believe that?’

‘I know it. ’

‘And you can love me?’ warm again against him now.

‘I can love thee more.’

‘I will try to kiss thee very well.’

‘Kiss me a little.’ *

70

‘I do not know how/

‘Just kiss me/

She kissed him on the cheek.

‘No/

‘Where do the noses go? I always wondered where the noses
would go/

‘Look, turn thy head/ and then their mouths were tight to-
gether and she lay close pressed against him and her mouth
opened a little gradually and then, suddenly, holding her against
him, he was happier than he had ever been, lightly, lovingly, ex-
ultingly, innerly happy and unthinking and untired and unwor-
ried and only feeling a great delight and he said, *My little rabbit.
My darling. My sweet. My long lovely/

‘What do you say?’ she said as though from a great distance
away.

‘My lovely one/ he said.

They lay there and he felt her heart beating against his and with
the side of his foot he stroked very lightly against the side of hers.
‘Thee came barefooted/ he said.

‘Yes/

‘Then thee knew thou wert coming to the bed/

‘Yes/

‘And you had no fear/

‘Yes. Much. But more fear of how it would be to take my shoes
off/

‘And what time is it now? glo sabes V
‘No. Thou hast no watch?* -
‘Yes. But it is behind thy back/

‘Take it from there/

‘No/

‘Then look over my shoulder/

It was one o’clock. The dial showed bright in the darkness that
the robe made.

‘Thy chin scratches my shoulder/

‘Pardon it. I have no tools to shave/

‘I like it. Is thy beard blond?*

‘Yes/

‘And will it be long?*

‘Not before the bridge. Maria, listen. Dost thou — ?*

‘Do I what?*

7 1

‘Dost thou wish ? *

‘Yes. Everything. Please. And if we do everything together, the
other maybe never will have been.’

‘Did you think of that?’

‘No. I think it in myself but Pilar told me.’

‘She is very wise.’

‘And another thing,’ Maria said softly. ‘She said for me to tell
you that I am not sick. She knows about such things and she said
to tell you that.’

‘She told you to tell me?’

‘Yes. I spoke to her and told her that I love you. I loved you
when I saw you to-day and I loved you always but I never saw you
before and I told Pilar and she said if I ever told you anything
about anything, to tell you that I was not sick. The other thing
she told me long ago. Soon after the train.’

‘What did she say ? ’

‘She said that nothing is done to oneself that one does not ac-
cept and that if I loved someone it would take it all away. I wished
to die, you see.’

‘What she said is true.’

‘And now I am happy that I did not die. I am so happy that I
did not die. And you can love me?’

‘Yes. I love you now.’

‘And I can be thy woman?’

‘I cannot have a woman doing what I do. But thou art my
woman now.’

‘If once I am, then I will keep on. Am I thy woman now?’

‘Yes, Maria. Yes, my little rabbit.’

She held herself tight to him and her lips looked for his and
then found them and were against them and he felt her, fresh,
new, and smooth and young and lovely with the warm, scalding
coolness and unbelievable to be there in the robe that was as
familiar as his clothes, or his shoes, or his duty and then she Said,
frightenedly, ‘And now let us do quickly what it is we do so that
the other is all gone.’

‘You want?’

,‘Yes,’ she said almost fiercely. ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’

72

CHAPTER 8

It was cold in the night and Robert Jordan slept heavily. Once
he woke and, stretching, realized that the girl was there, curled
far down in the robe, breathing lightly and regularly, and in the
dark, bringing his head in from the cold, the sky hard and sharp
with stars, the air cold in his nostrils, he put his head under the
warmth of the robe and kissed her smooth shoulder. She did not
wake and he rolled on to his side away from her and with his head
out of the robe in the cold again, lay awake a moment feeling the
long, seeping luxury of his fatigue and then the smooth tactile
happiness of their two bodies touching and then, as he pushed his
legs out deep as they would go in the robe, he slipped down
steeply into sleep.

He woke at first daylight and the girl was gone. He knew it as
he woke and, putting out his arm, he felt the robe warm where she
had been. He looked at the mouth of the cave where the blanket
showed frost-rimmed and saw the thin grey smoke from the crack
in the rocks that meant the kitchen fire was lighted.

A man came out of the timber, a blanket worn over his head
like a poncho. Robert Jordan saw it was Pablo and that he was
smoking a cigarette. He’s been down corralKng the horses, he
thought.

Pablo pulled open the blanket and went into the cave without
looking toward Robert Jordan.

Robert Jordan felt with his hand the light frost that lay on the
worn, spotted green balloon-silk outer covering of the five-year-
old down robe, then settled into it again. Bueno , he said to him-
self, feeling the familiar caress of the flannel lining as he spread
his legs wide, then drew them together and then turned on his
side so that his head would be away from the direction where he
knew the sun would come. Que mds da> I might as well sleep
some more.

He slept until the sound of airplane motors woke him.

Lying on his back, he saw them, a fascist patrol of three Fiats,
tiny, bright, fast-moving across the mountain sky, headed in the

73

direction from which Anselmo and he had come yesterday. The
three passed and then came nine more, flying much higher in the
minute, pointed formations of threes, threes, and threes.

Pablo and the gipsy were standing at the cave mouth, in the
shadow, w%:hing the sky, and as Robert Jordan lay still, the sky
now full of the high hammering roar of motors, there was a new
droning roar and three more planes came over at less than a thou-
sand feet above the clearing. These three were Heinkel one-
elevens, twin-motor bombers.

Robert Jordan, his head in the shadow of the rocks, knew they
would not see him, and that it did not matter if they did. He knew
they could possibly see the horses in the corral if they were looking
for anything in these mountains. If they were not looking for any-
thing they might still see them but would naturally take them for
some of their own cavalry mounts. Then came a new and louder
droning roar and three more Heinkel one-elevens showed coming
steeply, stiffly, lower yet, crossing in rigid formation, their pound-
ing roar approaching in crescendo to an absolute of noise and then
receding as they passed the clearing.

Robert Jordan unrolled the bundle of clothing that made his -
pillow and pulled on his shirt. It was over his head and he was
pulling it down when he heard the next planes coming and he
pulled his trousers on under the robe and lay still as three more of
the Heinkel bi-motor bombers came over. Before they were gone
over the shoulder of the mountain, he had buckled on his pistol,
rolled the robe and placed it against the rocks and sat now, close
against the rocks, tying his rope-soled shoes when the approach-
ing droning turned to a greater clattering roar than ever before
and nine more Heinkel light bombers came in echelons; hammer-
ing the. sky apart as they went over.

Robert Jordan slipped along the rocks to the mouth of the cave
where one of the brothers, Pablo, the gipsy, Anselmo, Agustin,
and the woman stood in the mouth looking out.

‘Have there been planes like this before ?’ he asked.

‘Never,’ said Pablo. ‘Get in. They will see thee.’

The sun had not yet hit the mouth of the cave. It was just now
shining on the meadow by the stream and Robert Jordan knew
they could not be seen in the dark, early-morning shadow of i:he
trees and the solid shade the rocks made, but he went in the cave
in order not to make them nervous.

74

‘They are many/ the woman said.

‘And there will be more/ Robert Jordan said.

‘How do you know?’ Pablo asked suspiciously.

‘Those, just now, will have pursuit planes with them/

Just then they heard them, the higher, whining dtone, and as
they passed at about five thousand feet, Robert Jordan counted
fifteen Fiats in echelon of echelons like a wild-goose flight of the
V-shaped threes.

In the cave entrance their faces all looked very sober and Robert
Jordan said, ‘You have not seen this many planes ?’

‘Never/ said Pablo.

‘There are not many at Segovia?*

‘Never has there been, we have seen three usually. Sometimes
six of the chasers. Perhaps three Junkers, the big ones with the
three motors, with the chasers with them. Never have we seen
planes like this.’

It is bad, Robert Jordan thought. This is really bad. Here is a
concentration of planes which means something very bad. I must
listen for them to unload. But no, they cannot have brought up
the troops yet for the attack. Certainly not before to-night or to-
morrow night, certainly not yet. Certainly they will not be mov-
ing anything at this hour.

He could still hear the receding drone. He looked at his watch.
By now they should be over the lines, the first ones anyway. He
pushed the knob that set the second-hand to clicking and watched
it move around. No, perhaps not yet. By now. Yes. "Well over by
now. Two hundred and fifty miles an hour for those one-elevens
anyway. Five minutes would carry them there. By now they’re
well beyond the pass with Castile all yellow and tawny beneath
them now in the morning, the yellow crossed by white roads and
spotted with the small villages and the shadows of the Heinkels
moving over the land as the shadows of sharks pass over a sandy
floor of the ocean.

There was no bump, bump, bumping thud of bombs. His
watch ticked on.

They’re going on to Colmenar, to Escorial, or to the flying field
at Manzanares el Real, he thought, with the old castle above the
lake with the ducks in the reeds and the fake airfield just behind
the real field with the dummy planes, not quite hidden, their
props turning in the wind. That’s where they must be headed.

* 75

They can’t know about the attack, he told himself and something
in him said, why can’t they? They’ve known about all the others.

‘Do you think they saw the horses?’ Pablo asked.

‘Those weren’t looking for horses,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘But did they see them? ’

‘Not unless they were asked to look for them.’

‘Could they see them?’

‘Probably not,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Unless the sun were on the
trees.’

‘It is on them very early,’ Pablo said miserably.

‘I think they have other things to think of besides thy horses,’
Robert Jordan said.

It was eight minutes since he had pushed the lever on the stop
watch and there was still no sound of bombing.

‘What do you do with the watch?’ the woman asked.

‘I listen where they have gone.’

‘Oh,’ she said. At ten minutes he stopped looking at the watch
knowing it would be too far away to hear, now, even allowing a
minute for the sound to travel, and said to Anselmo, ‘I would
speak to thee.’

Anselmo came out of the cave mouth and they walked a little
way from the entrance and stood beside a pine tree.

‘jQue tal ?’ Robert Jordan asked him. ‘How goes it?’

‘All right.’

‘Hast thou eaten?’

‘No. No one has eaten.’

‘Eat then and take something to eat at midday. I want you to
go to watch the road. Make a note of everything that passes both
up and down the road.’

‘I do not write.’

‘There is no need to,’ Robert Jordan took out two leaves from
his notebook and with his knife cut an inch from the end of his
pencil. ‘Take this and make a mark for tanks thus,’ he drew a
slanted tank, ‘and then a mark for each one and when there are
four, cross the fouf strokes for the fifth.*

‘In this way we count also.’

‘Good. Make another mark, two wheels and a box, for trucks.
If they are empty make a circle. If they are full of troops make a
straight mark. Mark for guns. Big ones, thus. Small ones, thus.
Mark for cars. Mark for ambulances. Thus, two wheels and a box

7 6

with a cross on it. Mark for troops on foot by companies, like this,
see ? A little square and then mark beside it. Mark for cavalry, like
this, you see? Like a horse. A box with four legs. That is a troop
of twenty horse. You understand? Each troop a mark.’

‘Yes. It is ingenious.*

‘Now,’ he drew two large wheels with circles around them and
a short line for a gun barrel. ‘These are anti-tanks. They have
rubber tyres. Mark for them. These are anti-aircraft,* two wheels
with the gun barrel slanted up. ‘Mark for them also. Do you
understand? Have you seen such guns?’

‘Yes,’ Anselmo said. ‘Of course. It is clear.’

‘Take the gipsy with you that he will know from what point
you will be watching so you may be relieved. Pick a place that is
safe, not too close and from where you can see well and com-
fortably. Stay until you are relieved.’

‘I understand.’

‘Good. And that when you come back, I should know every-
thing that moved upon the road. One paper is for movement up.
One is for movement down the road.’

They walked over toward the cave.

‘Send Rafael to me,’ Robert Jordan said and waited by the tree.
He watched Anselmo go into the cave, the blanket falling behind
him. The gipsy sauntered out, wiping his mouth with his hand.

‘jQ u £ tctl ?* the gipsy said. ‘Did you divert yourself last night?*

‘I slept.’

‘Less bad,’ the gipsy said and grinned. ‘Have you a cigarette?’

‘Listen,’ Robert Jordan said and felt in his pocket for the cigar-
ettes. ‘I wish you to go with Anselmo to a place from which he
will observe the road. There you will leave him, noting the place
in order that you may guide me to it or guide whoever will re-
lieve him later. You will go to where you can observe the saw,
mill and note if there are any changes in the post there.’

‘What changes?’

‘How many men are there now ? *

‘Eight. The last I knew.’

‘See how many are there now. See at what intervals the guard
is relieved at that bridge.’

‘Intervals?’

‘How many hours the guard stays on and at what time a change
is made.’

77

‘I have no watch.’

‘Take mine.’ He unstrapped it.

‘What a watch,’ Rafael said admiringly. ‘Look at what com-
plications. Such a watch should be able to read and write. Look
at what complications of numbers. It’s a watch to end watches.’

‘Don’t fool with it,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Can you tell time?’

‘Why not? Twelve o’clock midday. Hunger. Twelve o’clock
midnight. Sleep. Six o’clock in the morning, hunger. Six o’clock
at night, drunk. With luck. Ten o’clock at night

‘Shut up,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘You don’t need to be a clown. I
want you to check on the guard at the big bridge and the post on
the road below in the same manner as the post and the guard at
the saw mill and the small bridge.’

‘It is much work,’ the gipsy smiled. ‘You are sure there is no
one you would rather send than me? ’

‘No, Rafael. It is very important. That you should do it very
carefully and keeping out of sight with care.’

‘I believe I will keep out of sight,’ the gipsy said. ‘Why do you
tell me to keep out of sight? You think I want to be shot?* i

‘Take things a litde seriously,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘This is
serious.’

‘Thou askest me to take things seriously? After what thou didst
last night? When thou needest to kill a man and instead did what
you did? You were supposed to kill one, not make one ! When we
have just seen the sky full of airplanes of a quantity to kill us
back to our grandfathers and forward to all unborn grandsons
including all cats, goats, and bedbugs. Airplanes making a noise
to curdle the milk in your mother’s breasts as they pass over
darkening the sky and roaring like lions and you ask me to fake
things seriously. I take them too seriously already.’

‘All right,’ said Robert Jordan and laughed and put his hand
bn the gipsy’s shoulder. 'Don’t take them too seriously then. Now
finish your breakfast and go.’

‘And thou? ’ the gipsy asked. ‘What do you do?*

‘I go to see El Sordo.’

‘After those airplanes it is very possible that thou wilt find
nobody in the whole mountains,’ the gipsy said. ‘There must have
been many people sweating the big drop this morning when those
passed.’

‘Those have other work than hunting guerrillas.’

' 7S

‘Yes/ the gipsy said. Then shook his head. ‘But when they care
to undertake that work/

‘Que vaj Robert Jordan said. ‘Those are the best of the German
light bombers. They do not send those after gipsies.’

‘They give me a horror/ Rafael said. ‘Of such things, yes, I am
frightened/

‘They go to bomb an airfield/ Robert Jordan told him as they
went into the cave. ‘I am almost sure they go for that/

‘What do you say?’ the woman of Pablo asked. She poured him
a bowl of coffee and handed him a can of condensed milk.

‘There is milk? .What luxury !’

‘There is everything/ she said. ‘And since the planes there is
much fear. Where did you say they went?’

Robert Jordan dripped some of the thick milk into his coffee
from the slit cut in the can, wiped the can on the rim of the cup,
and stirred the coffee until it was a light brown.

‘They go to bomb an airfield, I believe. They might go to Es-
corial and Colmenar. Perhaps all three/

‘That they should go a long way and keep away from here/
Pablo said.

‘And why are they here now?’ the woman asked. ‘What brings
them now ? Never have we seen such planes. Nor in such quan-
tity. Do they prepare an attack?’

‘What movement was there on the road last night?* Robert
Jordan asked. The girl Maria was close to him but he did not look
at her.

‘You/ the woman said. ‘Fernando. You were in La Granja last
night. What movement was there?’

‘Nothing/ a short, open-faced man of about thirty-five with a
cast in one eye, whom Robert Jordan had not seen before, an-
swered. ‘A few camions as usual. Some cars. No movement of
troops while I was there.*

‘You go into La Granja every night?’ Robert Jordan asked him.

‘I or another/ Fernando said. ‘Someone goes/

‘They go for the news. For tobacco. For small' things/ the
woman said.

‘We have people there?’

‘Yes. Why not? Those who work the power plant. Some
others/

‘What was the news?’

79

'Pues nada. There was nothing. It still goes badly in the north.
That is not news. In the north it has gone badly now since the
beginning.’

‘Did you hear anything from Segovia?’

‘No, hombre . I did not ask.’

‘Do you go into Segovia?’

‘Sometimes,’ Fernando said. ‘But there is danger. There are
controls where they ask for your papers.’

‘Do you know the airfield?*

‘No, hombre . I know where it is but I was never close to it.
There, there is much asking for papers.’

‘No one spoke about these planes last night? ’

‘In La Granja? Nobody. But they will talk about them to-night
certainly. They talked about the broadcast of Quiepo de Llano.
Nothing more. Oh, yes. It seems that the Republic is preparing
an offensive.’

‘That what?’

‘That the Republic is preparing an offensive.’

‘Where?’

‘It is not certain. Perhaps here. Perhaps for another part of the
Sierra. Hast thou heard of it?’

‘They say this in La Granja?’

‘Yes, hombre . I had forgotten it. But there is always much talk
of offensives.’

‘Where does this talk come from?’

‘Where? Why from different people. The -officers speak in the
cafes in Segovia and Avila and the waiters note it. The rumours
come running. Since some time they speak of an offensive by the
Republic in these parts,’

‘By the Republic or by the fascists? ’

‘By the Republic. If it were by the fascists all would know of
it. No, this is an offensive of quite some size. Some say there are
two. One here and the other over the Alto del Le6n near the Es-
corial. Have you heard aught of this?’

‘What else did you hear? ’

'Nada, hombre. Nothing. Oh, yes. There was some talk that
Republicans would try to blow up the bridges, if there was to be
an offensive. But the bridges are guarded.’

‘Art thou joking?’ Robert Jordan said, sipping his coffee.

‘No, hombre said Fernando.

80

‘This one doesn’t joke,’ the woman said. ‘Bad luck that he
doesn’t.’

‘Then,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘Thank you for all the news. Did
you near nothing more?’

‘No. They talk, as always, of troops to be sent to clear out these
mountains. There is some talk that they are on the way. That they
have been sent already from Valladolid. But they always talk
in that way. It is not to give any importance to.’

‘And thou,’ the woman of Pablo said to Pablo almost viciously.
‘With thy talk of safety.’

Pablo looked at her reflectively and scratched his chin. ‘Thou/
he said. ‘And thy bridges.’

‘What bridges?’ asked Fernando cheerfully.

‘Stupid,’ the woman said to him. ‘Thick head. Tonto. Take an-
other cup of coffee and try to remember more news.’

‘Don’t be angry, Pilar/ Fernando said calmly and cheerfully.
‘Neither should one become alarmed at rumours. I have told thee
and this comrade all that I remember.’

‘You don’t remember anything more/ Robert Jordan asked.

‘No/ Fernando said with dignity. ‘And I am fortunate to re-
member this because, since it was but rumours, I paid no attention
to any of it.*

‘Then there may have been more?’

‘Yes. It is possible. But I paid no attention. For a year I have
heard nothing but rumours.’

Robert Jordan heard a quick, control-breaking sniff of laughter
from the girl, Maria, who was standing behind him.

‘Tell us one more rumour, Fernandito/ she said and then her
shoulders shook again.

‘If I could remember, I would not,’ Fernando said. ‘It is be-
neath a man’s dignity to listen and give importance to rumours/

‘And with this we will save the Republic,’ the woman said.

‘No. You will save it by blowing bridges,’ Pablo told her.

‘Go/ said Robert Jordan to Anselmo and Rafael. ‘If you have
eaten/

‘We go now/ the old man said and the two of them stood up.
Robert Jordan felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Maria. ‘Thou
shouldst eat,’ she said and let her hand rest there. ‘Eat well so that
thy stomach can support more rumours/

‘The rumours have taken the place of the appetite/

81

‘No. It should not be so. Eat this now before more rumours
come.’ She put the bowl before him.

‘Do not make a joke of me,’ Fernando said to her. ‘I am thy
good friend, Maria.’

‘I do not joke at thee, Fernando. I only joke with him and he
should eat or he will be hungry.’

‘We should all eat,’ Fernando said. ‘Pilar, what passes that we
are not served?’ •

‘Nothing, man,’ the woman of Pablo said and filled his bowl
with the meat stew. ‘Eat. Yes, that’s what you can do. Eat now.’

‘It is very good, Pilar,’ Fernando said, all dignity intact.

‘Thank you,’ said the woman. ‘Thank you and thank you
again.’

‘Are you angry at me?’ Fernando asked.

‘No. Eat. Go ahead and eat.’

‘I will,’ said Fernando. ‘Thank you.’

Robert Jordan looked at Maria and her shoulders started shak-
ing again and she looked away. Fernando ate steadily, a proud
and dignified expression on his face, the digpity of which could
not be affected even by the huge spoon that he was using or the
slight dripping of juice from the stew which ran from the corners
of his mouth.

‘Do you like the food?’ the woman of Pablo asked him.

‘Yes, Pilar,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘It is the same as usual.’

Robert Jordan felt Maria’s hand on his arm and felt her fingers
tighten with delight.

‘It is for that that you like it?’ the woman asked Fernando.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I see. The stew; as usual. Como siempre. Things
are bad in the north; as usual. An offensive here; as usual. That
troops come to hunt us out; as usual. You could serve as a monu-
ment to as usual.’

‘But the last two are only rumours, Pilar.’

‘Spain,’ the woman of Pablo said bitterly. Then turned to
Robert Jordan. ‘Do they have people such as this in other coun-
tries?’

‘There are no other countries like Spain,’ Robert Jordan said
politely.

‘You are right,’ Fernando said. ‘There is no other country in
the world like Spain.’

‘Has thou ever seen any other country?’ the woman asked him.

82

‘Nay/ said Fernando. ‘Nor do I wish to.’

‘You see? 1 the woman of Pablo said to Robert Jordan.

‘Fernandito,’ Maria said to him. ‘Tell us of the time thee went
to Valencia.’

‘I did not like Valencia.’

‘Why?’ Maria asked and pressed Robert Jordan’s arm again.
‘Why did thee not like it ? ’

‘The people had no manners and I could not understand them.
All they did was shout che at one another.’

‘Could they understand thee? ’ Maria asked.

‘They pretended not to,’ Fernando said.

‘And what did thee there? *

‘I left without even seeing the sea,’ Fernando said. ‘I did not
like the people.’

‘Oh, get out of here, you old maid,’ the woman of Pablo said.
‘Get out of here before you make me sick. In Valencia I had
the best time of my life Vamosi Valencia. Don’t talk to me of
Valencia.’

‘What did thee there?’ Maria asked. The woman of Pablo sat
down at the table with a bowl of coffee, a piece of bread, and a
bowl of the stew.

c jQue? what did we there? I was there when Finito had a con-
tract for three fights at the Feria. Never have I seen so many peo-
ple. Never have I seen cafes so crowded. For hours it would be
impossible to get a seat and it was impossible to board the tram-
cars. In Valencia there was movement all day and all night.’

‘But what did you do?’ Maria asked.

‘All things,’ the woman said. ‘We went to the beach and lay in
the water and boats with sails were hauled up out of the sea by
oxen. The oxen driven to the water until they must swim; then
harnessed to the boats, and, when they found their feet, stag-
gering up the sand. Ten yokes of oxen dragging a boat with sails
out of the sea in the morning with the line of the small waves
breaking on the beach. That is Valencia.’

‘But what did thee besides watch oxen?’

‘We ate in pavilioris on the sand. Pastries made of cooked and
shredded fish and red and green peppers and small nuts like
grains of rice. Pastries delicate and flaky and the fish of a richness
that was incredible. Prawns fresh from the sea sprinkled with
lime juice. They were pink and sweet and there were four bites

83

to a prawn. Of those we ate many. Then we ate paella with fresh
sea food, clams in their shells, mussels, crayfish, and small eels.
Then we ate even smaller eels alone cooked in oil and as tiny as
bean sprouts and curled in all directions and so tender they disap-
peared in the mouth without chewing. All the time drinking a
white wine, cold, light, and good at thirty centimos the bottle.
And for an end; melon. That is the home of the melon/

‘The melon of Castile is better,’ Fernando said.

‘ Qui va ,’ said the woman of Pablo. ‘The melon of Castile is for
self abuse. The melon of Valencia for eating. When I think of
those melons long as one’s arm, green like the sea and crisp and
juicy to cut and sweeter than the early morning in summer. Aye,
when I think of those smallest eels, tiny, delicate, and in mounds
on the plate. Also the beer in pitchers all through the afternoon,
the beer sweating in its coldness in pitchers the size of water jugs.*

‘And what did thee when not eating nor drinking?’

‘We made love in the room with the strip wood blinds hanging
over the balcony and a breeze through the opening of the top of
the door which turned on hinges. We made love there, the room
dark in the day time from the hanging blinds, and from the streets
there was the scent of the flower market and the smell of burned
powder from the firecrackers of the traca that ran through the
streets exploding each noon during the Feria. It was a line of fire-
works that ran through all the city, the firecrackers linked to-
gether and the explosions running along on poles and wires of the
tramways, exploding with great noise and a jumping from pole to
pole with a sharpness and a cracking of explosion you could not
believe.

‘We made love and then sent for another pitcher of beer with
the drops of its coldness on the glass and when the girl brought it,
I took it from the door and I placed the coldness of the pitcher
against the back of Finito as he lay, now, asleep, not having
wakened when the beer was brought and he said, “No, Pilar. No,
woman, let me sleep.” And I said, “No, wake up and drink this
to see how cold,” and he drank without opening his eyes and went
to sleep again and I lay with my back against a pillow at the foot
of the bed and watched him sleep, brown and dark-haired and
young and quiet in his sleep, and drank the whole pitcher, listen-
ing now to the music of a band that was passing. You,’ she said to
Pablo. ‘Do you know aught of such things ?’

‘We have done things together , 9 Pablo said.

‘Yes/ the woman said. ‘Why not? And thou wert more man
than Finito in your time. But never did we go to Valencia. Never
did we lie in bed together and hear a band pass in Valencia . 9

‘It was impossible,’ Pablo told her. ‘We have had no opportun-
ity to go to V alencia. Thou knowest that if thou wilt be reason-
able. But, with Finito, neither did thee blow up any train . 9

‘No , 9 said the woman. ‘That is what is left to us. The train. Yes.
Always the train. No one can speak against that. That remains of
all the laziness, sloth, and failure. That remains of the cowardice
of this moment. There were many other things before too. I do
not want to be unjust. But no one can speak against Valencia
either. You hear me ? 9

‘I did not like it , 9 Fernando said quietly. ‘I did not like Valencia . 9

‘Yet they speak of the mule as stubborn , 9 the woman said.
‘Clean up, Maria, that we may go . 9

As she said this they heard the first sound of the planes return-
ing.

CHAPTER 9

They stood in the mouth of the cave and watched them. The
bombers were high now in fast, ugly arrow-heads beating the sky
apart with the noise of their motors. They are shaped like sharks,
Robert Jordan thought, the wide-finned, sharp-nosed sharks of
the Gulf Stream. But these, wide-finned in silver, roaring, the
light mist of their propellers in the sun, these do not move like
sharks. They move like nothing there has ever been. They move
like mechanized doom.

You ought to write, he told himself. Maybe you will again
sometime. He felt Maria holding to his arm. She was looking up
and he said to her, ‘What do they look like to you, guapaV

T don’t know , 9 she said. ‘Death, I think . 9

‘They look like planes to me , 9 the woman of Pablo said. ‘Where
are the little ones ? 9

‘They may be crossing at another part , 9 Robert Jordan said.
‘Those bombers are too fast to have to wait for them and have
come back alone. We never follow them across the lines to fight.
There aren’t enough planes to risk it . 9

85

Just then three Heinkel fighters in V formation came low over
the clearing coming toward them, just over the tree tops, like
clattering, wing-tiiting, pinch-nosed ugly toys, to enlarge’ sud-
denly, fearfully to their actual size; pouring past a w hinin g roar.
They were so low that from the cave mouth all of them could see
the pilots, helmeted, goggled, a scarf blowing back from behind
the patrol leader’s head.

‘Those can see the horses/ Pablo said.

‘Those can see thy cigarette butts/ the woman said. ‘Let fall the
blanket/

No more planes came over. The others must have crossed
farther up the range and when the droning was gone they went
out of the cave into the open.

The sky was empty now and high and blue and clear.

‘It seems as though they were a dream that you wake from *
Maria said to Robert Jordan. There was not even the last almost
unheard hum that comes like a finger faintly touching and leav-
ing and touching again after the sound is gone almost past hearing.

‘They are no dream and you go in and clean up/ Pilar said
to her. ‘What about it?’ she turned to Robert Jordan. ‘Should we
ride or walk?’

Pablo looked at her and grunted.

‘As you will/ Robert Jordan said.

‘Then let us walk/ she said. ‘I would like it for the liver.’

‘Riding is good for the liver.’

‘Yes, but hard on the buttocks. We will walk and thou She
turned to Pablo. ‘Go down and count thy beasts and see they have
not flown away with any.’

‘Do you want a horse to ride?’ Pablo asked Robert Jordan.

‘No. Many thinks. What about the girl ? ’

‘Better for her to walk/ Pilar said. ‘She’ll get stiff in too many
places and serve for nothing.’

Robert Jordan felt his face reddening.

‘Did you sleep well?’ Pilar asked. Then said, ‘It is true that there
is no sickness. There could have been. I know not why there
wasn’t. There probably still is God after all, although we have
abolished Him. Go on,’ she said to Pablo. ‘This does not concern
thee. This is of people younger than thee. Made of other material.
Get on.’ Then to Robert Jordan, ‘Agustin is looking after thy
things. We go when he comes.’

86

It was a clear, bright day and warm now in the sun. Robert
Jordan looked at the big, brown-faced woman with her kind,
widely set eyes and her square, heavy face, lined and pleasantly
ugly, the eyes merry, but the face sad until the lips moved. He
looked at her and then at the man, heavy and stolid, moving off
through the trees toward the corral. The woman, too, was look-
ing after him.

‘Did you make love?’ the woman said.

‘What did she say?’

‘She would not tell me.’

T neither.’

‘Then you made love,’ the woman said. ‘Be as careful with her
as you can.’

‘What if she has a baby?’

‘That will do no harm,’ the woman said. ‘That will do less
harm.’

‘This is no place for that.’

‘She will not stay here. She will go with you.’

‘And where will I go? I can’t take a woman where I go.*

‘Who knows? You may take two where you go.’

‘That is no way to talk.’

‘Listen,’ the woman said. ‘I am no coward, but I see things very
clearly in the early morning and I think there are many that we
know that are alive now who will never see another Sunday.’

‘In what day are we?’

‘Sunday.’

‘Que vaj said Robert Jordan. ‘Another Sunday is very far. If
we see Wednesday we are all right. But I do not like to hear thee
talk like this.’

‘Everyone needs to talk to someone,’ the woman said. ‘Before
we had religion and other nonsense. Now for everyone there
should be someone to whom one can speak frankly, for all the
valour that one could have one becomes very alone.’

‘We are not alone. We are all together.*

‘The sight of those machines does things to one,’ the woman
said. ‘We are nothing against such machines. ’-

‘Yet we can beat them.’

‘Look,’ the woman said. ‘I confess a sadness to you, but do not
think I lack resolution. Nothing has happened to my resolution.

‘The sadness will dissipate as the sun rises. It is like a mist.’

87

‘Clearly/ the woman said. ‘If you want it that way. Perhaps it
came from talking that foolishness about Valencia. And that
failure of a man who has gone to look at his horses. I wounded
him much with the story. Kill him, yes. Curse him, yes. But
wound him, no.’

‘How came you to be with him?’

‘How is one with anyone? In the first days of the movement
and before too, he was something. Something serious. But now
he is finished. The plug has been drawn and the wine has all run
out of the skin,’

‘I do not like him.’

‘Nor does he like you, and with reason. Last night I slept with
him.’ She smiled now and shook her head. ‘ Vamos a ver ,’ she said.
‘I said to him, “Pablo, why did you not kill the foreigner?”

‘ “He’s a good boy, Pilar,” he said. “He’s a good boy.”

‘So I said, “You understand now that I command? ”

‘ “Yes, Pilar. Yes,” he said. Later in the night I hear him awake
and he is crying. He is crying in a short and ugly manner as a man
cries when it is as though there is an animal inside that is shaking
him.

‘ “What passes with thee, Pablo?” I said to him and I took hold
of him and held him.

* “Nothing, Pilar. Nothing.”

* “Yes. Something passes with thee.”

* “The people,” he said. “The way they left me. The gente .”

‘ “Yes, but they are with me,” I said, “and I am thy woman.”

‘ “Pilar,” he said, “remember the train.” Then he said, “May
God aid thee. Pilar.”

‘ “What are you talking of God for?” I said to him. “What
way is that to speak?”

‘ “Yes,” he said “God and the Virgen.”

‘ “ QuS va , God and the Virgen ,” I said to him. “Is that any way
to talk?”

* “I am afraid to die, Pilar,” he said. “ Tengo miedo de morir.
Dost thou understand ? ”

‘ “Then get out of bed,” I said to him. “There is not room in
one bed for me and thee and thy fear all together.”

‘Then he was ashamed and was quiet and I went to sleep but,
man, he’s a ruin.’

Robert Jordan said nothing.

‘All my life I have had this sadness at intervals/ the woman
said. ‘But it is not like the sadness of Pablo. It does not affect my
resolution.’

‘I believe that.’

‘It may be it is like the times of a woman,’ she said. ‘It may be
it is nothing,’ she paused, then went on. ‘I put great illusion in
the Republic. I believe firmly in the Republic and I have faith. I
believe in it with fervour as those who have religious faith believe
in the mysteries.’

‘I believe you.’

‘And you have this same faith?’

‘In the Republic?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes,’ he said, hoping it was true.

‘I am happy,’ the woman said. ‘And you have no fear?’

‘Not to die,’ he said truly.

‘But other feaiirs?’

‘Only of not doing my duty as I should.’

‘Not of capture, as the other had?’

‘No,’ he said truly. ‘Fearing that, one would be so preoccupied
as to be useless.*

‘You are a very cold boy.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not think so.’

‘No. In the head you are very cold.*

‘It is that I am very preoccupied with my work.’

‘But you do not like the things of life?’

‘Yes. Very much. But not to interfere with my work.’

‘You like to drink, I know. I have seen.’

‘Yes. Very much. But not to interfere with my work.’

‘And women?’

*1 like them very much, but I have not given them much im-
portance.*

‘You do not care for them?’

‘Yes. But I have not found one that moved me as they say they
should move you.’

‘I think you lie.’

‘Maybe a little.*

‘But you care for Maria.’

‘Yes. Suddenly and very much.’

‘I, too. I care for her very much. Yes. Much.’

89

‘I, too/ said Robert Jordan, and could feel his voice thickening.
‘I, too. Yes/ It gave him pleasure to say it and he said it quite
formally in Spanish. ‘I care for her very much/

‘I will leave you alone with her after we have seen El
Sordo/

Robert Jordan said nothing. Then, he said, ‘That is not neces-
sary.*

‘Yes, man. It is necessary. There is not much time/

‘Did you see that in the hand ? 5 he asked.

‘No. Do not remember that nonsense of the hand/

She had put that away with all the other things that might do
ill to the Republic.

Robert Jordan said nothing. He was looking at Maria putting
away the dishes inside the ckve. She wiped her hands and turned
and smiled at him. She could not hear what Pilar was saying, but
as she smiled at Robert Jordan she blushed dark under the tawny
skin and then smiled at him again.

‘There is the day also/ the woman said. ‘You have the night,
but there is the day, too. Clearly, there is no such luxury as in
Valencia in my time. But you could pick a few wild strawberries
or something/ She laughed.

Robert Jordan put his arm on her big shoulder. ‘I care for thee,
too/ he said. ‘I care for thee very much/

‘Thou art a regular Don Juan Tenorio/ the woman said, em-
barrassed now with affection. ‘There is a commencement of
caring for everyone. Here comes Agustm/

Robert Jordan went into the cave and up to where Maria was
standing. She watched him come toward her, her eyes bright, the
blush again on her cheeks and throat.

‘Hello, litde rabbit/ he said and kissed her on the mouth. She
held him tight to her and looked in his face and said, ‘Hello. Oh,
hello. Hello/

Fernando, still sitting at the table smoking a cigarette, stood
up, shook his head, and walked out, picking up his carbine from
where it leaned against the wall.

‘It is very informal/ he said to Pilar. ‘And I do not like it. You
should take care of the girl/

‘I am/ said Pilar, ‘That comrade is her novio.’

‘Oh/ said Fernando. ‘In that case, since they are engaged, I
encounter it to be perfeedy normal/

90

*1 am pleased, 5 the woman said.

‘Equally,* Fernando agreed gravely. ‘ Salud , Pilar.’

‘Where are you going?*

‘To the upper post to relieve Primitivo.*

‘Where the hell are you going?* Agustin asked the grave little
man as he came up.

‘To my duty,* Fernando said with dignity.

‘Thy duty,* said Agustm mockingly. ‘I besmirch the milk of
thy duty.* Then, turning to the woman, ‘Where the un-nameable
is this vileness that I am to guard? ’

‘In the cave,* Pilar said. ‘In two sacks. And I am tired of thy
obscenity.*

‘I obscenity in the milk of thy tiredness,* Agustin said.

‘Then go and befoul thyself,* Pilar said to him without heat.

‘Thy mother,* Agustin replied.

‘Thou never had one,’ Pilar told him, the insults having reached
the ultimate formalism in Spanish in which the acts are never
stated but only implied.

‘What are they doing in there?* Agustin now asked confi-
dentially.

‘Nothing,’ Pilar told him. ‘ Nada . We are, after all, in the
spring, animal.’

‘Animal,* said Agustin, relishing the word. ‘Animal. And thou.
Daughter of the great whore of whores. I befoul myself in the
milk of the springtime.’

Pilar slapped him on the shoulder.

‘You,* she said, and laughed that booming laugh. ‘You lack
variety in your cursing. But you have force. Did you see the
planes?*

‘I un-name in the milk of their motors ,* Agustin said, nodding
his head and biting his lower lip.

‘That’s something,’ Pilar said. ‘That is really something. But
really difficult of execution.’

‘At that altitude, yes,’ Agustin grinned. * Desde luego. But it is
better to joke,’

‘Yes,’ the woman of Pablo said. ‘It is much better to joke, and
you are a good man and you joke with force.’

‘Listen, Pilar,* Agustin said seriously. ‘Something is preparing.
Is it not true?*

‘How does it seem to you?*

‘Of a foulness that cannot be worse. Those were many planes,
woman. Many planes/

‘And thou hast caught fear from them like all the others?*

‘ Que va,* said Agustin. ‘What do you think they are preparing?’

‘Look,’ Pilar said. ‘From this boy coming for the bridges ob-
viously the Republic is preparing an offensive. From these planes
obviously the fascists are preparing to meet it. But why show the
planes?’

‘In this war are many foolish things,’ Agustin said. ‘In this war
there is an idiocy without bounds.’

‘Clearly,’ said Pilar. ‘Otherwise we could not be here.’

‘Yes,’ said Agustin. ‘We swim within the idiocy for a year now.
But Pablo is a man of much understanding. Pablo is very wily.’

‘Why do you say this?*

*1 say it.’

‘But you must understand,’ Pilar explained. ‘It is now too late
to be saved by wiliness and he has lost the other.’

‘I understand,’ said Agustfn. ‘I know we must go. And since
we must win to survive ultimately, it is necessary that the bridges
must be blown. But Pablo, for the coward that he now is, is very
smart.’

‘I, too, am smart.’

‘No, Pilar/ Agustin said. ‘You are not smart. You are brave.
You arc loyal. You have decision. You have intuition. Much de-
cision and much heart. But you are not smart.’

‘You believe that?’ the woman asked thoughtfully.

‘Yes, Pilar.’

‘The boy is smart,’ the woman said. ‘Smart and cold. Very cold
in the head.’

‘Yes,’ Agustin said. ‘He must know his business or they would
not have him doing this. But I do not know that he is smart. Pablo
I \now is smart.*

‘But rendered useless by his fear and his disinclination to
action.’

‘But still smart.’

‘And what do you say?’

‘Nothing. I try to consider it intelligently. In this moment w-e
need to act with intelligence. After the bridge we must leave at
once. All must be prepared. We must know for where we are
leaving and how.’

92

‘Naturally.’

‘For this - Pablo. It must be done smartly.’

‘I have no confidence in Pablo.’

‘In this, yes.’

‘No. You do not know how far he is ruined.’

‘j Pero es muy vivo . He is very smart. And if we do not do this
smartly we are obscenitied.’

‘I will think about it,’ Pilar said. ‘I have the day to think about
it.’

‘For the bridges; the boy,’ Agustln said. ‘This he must know.
Look at the fine manner in which the other organized the train.’

‘Yes,’ Pilar said. ‘It was really he who planned all.’

‘You for energy and resolution,’ Agustin said. ‘But Pablo for
the moving. Pablo for the retreat. Force him now to study it.’

‘You are a man of intelligence.’

‘Intelligent, yes,’ Agustin said. ‘But sin picardia, Pablo for that.’

‘With his fear and all?’

‘With his fear and all.’

‘And what do you think of the bridges?’

‘It is necessary. That I know. Two things we must do. We
must leave here and we must win. The bridges are necessary if we
are to win.’

‘If Pablo is so smart, why does he not see that?’

‘He wants things as they are for his own weakness. He wants
to stay in the eddy of his own weakness. But the river is rising.
Forced to a change, he will be smart in the change. Es muy vivo . 7

‘It is good that the boy did not kill him.’

‘ Que va. The gipsy wanted me to kill him last night. The gipsy
is an animal.’

‘You’re an animal, tod,’ she said. ‘But intelligent.’

‘We are both intelligent,’ Agustin said. ‘But the talent is
Pablo !’

‘But difficult to put up with. You do not know how ruined.’

‘Yes. But a talent. Look, Pilar. To make war all you need is in-
telligence. But to win you need talent and material.’

‘I will think it over,’ she said. ‘We must start now. We are late.’
Then, raising her voice, ‘English !’ she called, ‘jingles! Come on f
Let us go.’

93

CHAPTER 10

‘Let us rest/ Pilar said to Robert Jordan. ‘Sit down here, Maria,
and let us rest/

‘We should continue/ Robert Jordan said. -‘Rest when we get
there. I must see this man/

‘You will see him/ the woman told him. ‘There is no hurry. Sit
down here, Maria/

‘Come on/ Robert Jordan said. ‘Rest at the top/

‘I rest now/ the woman said, and sat down by the stream. The
girl sat by her in the heather, the sun shining on her hair. Only
Robert Jordan stood looking across the high mountain meadow
with the trout brook running through it. There was heather
growing where he stood. There were grey boulders rising from
the yellow bracken that replaced the heather in the lower part
of the meadow and below was the dark line of the pines.

‘How far is it to El Sordo’s?’ he asked.

‘Not far/ the woman said. ‘It is across this open country, down
into the next valley and above the timber at the head of the
stream. Sit thee down and forget thy seriousness/

‘I want to see him and get it over with.’

‘I want to bathe my feet/ the woman said, and, taking off her
rope-soled shoes and pulling off a heavy wool stocking, she put
her right foot into the stream. ‘My God, it's cold/

‘We should have taken horses/ Robert Jordan told her.

‘This is good for me/ the woman said. ‘This is what I have
been missing. What’s the matter with you*?’

‘Nothing, except that I am in a hurry/

‘Then calm yourself. There is much time. What a day it is and
how I am contented not to be in pine trees. You cannot imagine
how one can tire of pine trees. Aren’t you tired of the pines,
guapaV

‘I like them/ the girl said.

‘What can you like about them?’

‘I like the odour and the feel of the needles under foot. I like
the wind in the high trees and the creaking they make against
each other/

94

‘You like anything/ Pilar said. ‘You are a gift to any man if
you could cook a litde better. But the pine tree makes a forest of
boredom. Thou hadst never known a forest of beech, nor of oak,
nor of chestnut. Those are forests. In such forests each tree differs,
and there is character and beauty. A forest of pine trees is bore-
dom. What do you say, Ingles ?’

‘I like the pines, too.’

‘ Pero , venga? Pilar said. ‘Two of you. So do I like the pines,
but we have been too long in these pines. Also I am tired of the
mountains. In mountains there are only two directions. Down
and up and down leads only to the road and the towns of the
fascists/

‘Do you ever go to Segovia?*

‘QuS va. With this face? This is a face that is known. How
would you like to be ugly, beautiful one?* she said to Maria.

‘Thou art not ugly.*

‘ Vamos , I’m not ugly. I was born ugly. All my life I have been
ugly. You, Ingles , who know nothing about women. Do you
know how an ugly woman feels ? Do you know what it is to be
ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? It is
very rare/ she put the other foot in the stream, then removed it.
‘God, it’s cold. Look at the water wagtail/ she said and pointed
to the grey ball of a bird that was bobbing up and down on a stone
up the stream. ‘Those are no good for anything. Neither to sing
nor to eat. Only to jerk their tails up and down. Give me a cigar-
ette, Ingle s, she said and taking it, lit it from a flint and steel
lighter in the pocket of her shirt. She puffed on the cigarette and
looked at Maria and Robert Jordan.

‘Life is very curious/ she said, and blew smoke from her
nostrils. ‘I would have made a good man, but I am all woman and
all ugly. Yet many men have loved me and I have loved many
men. It is curious. Listen, Ingles , this is interesting. Look at me,
as ugly as I am. Look closely, Ingles /

‘Thou are not ugly.’

' iQtte no? Don’t lie to me. Or/ she laughed the deep laugh.
‘Has it begun to work with thee ? No. That is a joke. No. Look at
the ugliness. Yet one has a feeling within one that blinds a man
while he loves you. You, with that feeling, blind him, and blind
yourself. Then one day, for no reason, he sees you ugly as you
really are and he is not blind any more and then you see yourself

95

as ugly as he sees you and you lose your man and your feeling.
Do you understand, guapa ?* She patted the girl on the shoulder.

‘No/ said Maria. ‘Because thou art not ugly/

. “Try to use thy head and not thy heart, and listen/ Pilar said.
‘I am telling you things of much interest. Does it not interest you,
Ingles ?*

‘Yes. But we should go.*

c Que va , go. I am very well here.’ Then, she went on, addressing
herself to Robert Jordan now as though she were speaking to a
classroom; almost as though she were lecturing. ‘After a while,
when you are as ugly as I am, as ugly as women can be, then, as I
say, after a while the feeling, the idiotic feeling that you are
beautiful, grows slowly in one again. It grows like a cabbage. And
then, when the feeling is grown, another man sees you and thinks
you are beautiful and it is all to do over. Now I think I am past
it, but it still might come. You are lucky, guapa , that you are not
ugly.’

‘But I am ugly/ Maria insisted.

‘Ask him / said Pilar. ‘And don’t put thy feet in the stream be-
cause it will freeze them/

‘If Roberto says we should go, I think we should go/ Maria
said.

‘Listen to you/ Pilar said. ‘I have as much at stake in this as thy
Roberto and I say that we are well off resting here by the stream
and that there is much time. Furthermore, I like to talk. It is the
only civilized thing we have. How otherwise can we divert our-
selves? Does what I say not hold interest for you, Ingles ?*

‘You speak very well. But there are other things that interest
me more than talk of beauty or lack of beauty/

‘Then let us talk of what interests thee/

‘Where were you at the start of the movement?*

‘In my town/

‘Avila?*

‘ Que va y Avila/

‘Pablo said he was from Avila/

‘He lies. He wanted to take a big city for his town. It was this
town/ and she named a town.

‘And what happened?*

‘Much/ the woman said. ‘Much. And all of it ugly. Even that
which was glorious/

9

‘Tell me about it/ Robert Jordan said.

‘It is brutal,’ the woman said. ‘I do not like to tell it before the
girl.’

‘Tell it,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘And if it is not for her, that she
should not listen.’

‘I can hear it,’ Maria said. She put her hand on Robert Jordan’s.
‘There is nothing that I cannot hear.’

‘It isn’t whether you can hear it,’ Pilar said. ‘It is whether I
should tell it to thee and make thee bad dreams.’

‘I will not get bad dreams from a story,’ Maria told her. ‘You
think after all that has happened with us I should get bad dreams
from a story?’

‘Maybe it will give the Ingtts bad dreams.’

‘Try it and see.’

‘No, InglSs , I am not joking. Didst thou see the start of the
movement in any small town?’

‘No,’ Robert Jordan said:

‘Then thou hast seen nothing. Thou hast seen the ruin that now
is Pablo, but you should have seen Pablo on that day.’

‘Tell it.’

‘Nay, I do not want to.’

‘Tell it.’

‘All right, then. I will tell it truly as it was. But thee, guapa , if
it reaches a point that it molests thee, tell me.’

‘I will not listen to it if it molests me,’ Maria told her. ‘It cannot
be worse than many things.’

‘I believe it can,’ the woman said. ‘Give me another cigarette,
Ingles , and vatnonos .’

The girl leaned back against the heather on the bank of the
stream and Robert Jordan stretched himself out, his shoulders
against the ground and his head against a clump of heather. He
reached out and found Maria’s hand and held it in his, rubbing
their two hands against the heather until she opened her hand and
laid it flat on top of his as they listened.

‘It was early in the morning when the civiles surrendered at the
barracks,’ Pilar began.

‘You had assaulted the barracks?* Robert Jordan asked.

‘Pablo had surrounded it in the dark, cut the telephone wires,
placed dynamite under one wall and called on the guardia civil
to surrender. They would not. And at daylight he blew the wall

97

open. There was fighting. Two civiles were killed. Four were
wounded and four surrendered.

‘We all lay on roofs and on the ground and at the edge of walls
and of buildings in the early morning light and the dust cloud of
the explosion had not yet settled, for it rose high in the air and
there was no wind to carry it, and all of us were firing into
the broken side of the building, loading and firing into the
smoke, and from within there was still the flashing of rifles and
then there was a shout from in the smoke not to fire more, and
out came the four civiles with their hands up. A big part of the
roof had fallen in and the wall was gone and they came out to
surrender.

‘ “Are there more inside ?” Pablo shouted.

* “There are wounded,”

‘ “Guard these, 5 ’ Pablo said to four who had come up from
where we were firing. “Stand there. Against the wall,” he told
the civiles. The four civiles stood against the wall, dirty, dusty,
smoke-grimed, with the four who were guarding them pointing
their guns at them and Pablo and the others went in to finish the
wounded.

‘After they had done this and there was no longer any noise of
the wounded, neither groaning, nor crying out, nor the noise of
shooting in the barracks, Pablo and the others came out and Pablo
had his shotgun slung over his back and was carrying in his hand
a Mauser pistol.

‘ “Look, Pilar,” he said. “This was in the hand of the officer
who killed himself. Never have I fired a pistol. You,” he said to
one of the guards, “show me how it works. No. Don’t show me.
Tell me.”

‘The four civiles had stood against the wall, sweating and say-
ing nothing while the shooting had gone on inside the barracks.
They' were all tall men with the faces of guardias civiles , which is
the same model of face as mine is. Except that their faces were
covered with the small stubble of this their last morning of not yet
being shaved and they stood there against the wall and said
nothing.

‘ “You,” said Pablo to the one who stood nearest him. “Tell
me how it works.”

‘ “Pull the small lever down,” the man said in a very dry voice.
“Pull the receiver back and let it snap forward .’ 5

98

‘“What is the receiver? ” asked Pablo, and he looked at the
four civiles . “What is the receiver?”

4 “The block on top of the action.”

‘Pablo pulled it back, but it stuck. “What now?” he said. “It
is jammed. You have lied to me.”

* “Pull it farther back and let it snap lightly forward,” the civil
said, and I have never heard such a tone of voice. It was greyer
than a morning without sunrise.

‘Pablo pulled and let go as the man had told him and the block
snapped forward into place and the pistol was cocked with the
hammer back. It is an ugly pistol, small in the round handle, large
and fiat in the barrel, and unwieldy. All this time the civiles had
been watching him and they had said nothing.

‘ “What are you going to do with us?” one asked him.

* “Shoot thee,” Pablo said.

‘ “When?” the man asked in the same grey voice.

‘ “Now,” said Pablo.

‘ “Where?” asked the man.

* “Here,” said Pablo. “Here. Now. Here and now. Have you
anything to say?”

* “ Nada ,” said the civil. “Nothing. But it is an ugly thing.”

‘ “And you are an ugly thing,” Pablo said. “You murderer of
peasants. You who would shoot your own mother.”

‘ “I have never killed anyone,” the civil said. “And do not speak
of my mother.”

‘ “Show us how to die. You, who have always done the killing.”

‘ “There is no necessity to insult us,” another civil said. “And
we know how to die.”

* “Kneel down against the wall with your head against the
wall,” Pablo told them. The civiles looked at one another.

‘ “Kneel*, I say,” Pablo said. “Get down and kneel.”

* “How does it seem to you, Paco?” one civil said to the “tallest,
who had spoken with Pablo about the pistol. He wore a corporal’s
stripes on his sleeves and was sweating very much although the
early morning was still cool.

‘ “It is as well to kneel,” he answered. “It is of no importance.”

‘ “It is closer to the earth,” the first one who had spoken said,
trying to make a joke, but they were all too grave for a joke and
no one smiled. *

‘ “Then let us kneel,” the first civil said, and the four knelt,

99

looking very awkward with their heads against the wall and their
hands by their sides, and Pablo passed behind them and shot each
in turn in the back of the head with the pistol, going from one to
another and putting the barrel of the pistol against the back of
their heads, each man slipping down as he fired. I can hear the
pistol still, sharp and yet muffled, and see the barrel jerk and the
head of the man drop forward. One held his head still when the
pistol touched it. One pushed his head forward and pressed his
forehead against the stone. One shivered in his whole body and
his head was shaking. Only one put his hands in front of his eyes,
and he was the last one, and the four bodies were slumped against
the wall when Pablo turned away from them and came toward
us with the pistol still in his hand.

* “Hold this for me, Pilar,” he said. “I do not know how to put
down the hammer,” and he handed me the pistol and stood there
looking at the four guards as they lay against the wall of the
barracks. All those who were with us stood there too, looking at
them, and no one said anything.

‘We had won the town and it was still early in the morning and
no one had eaten nor had any one drunk coffee and we looked at
each other and we were all powdered with dust from the blowing
up of the barracks, as powdered as men are at a threshing, and I
stood holding the pistol and it was heavy in my hand and I felt
weak in the stomach when I looked at the guards dead there
against the wall; they all as grey and as dusty as we were, but
each one was now moistening with his blood the dry dirt by the
wall where they lay. And as we stood there the sun rose over the
far hills and shone now on the road where we stood and on the
white wall of the barracks and the dust in the air was golden in
that first sun and the peasant who was beside me looked at the
waif of the barracks and what lay there and then looked at us and
then at the sun and said, “ Vaya , a day that commences.”

* “Now let us go and get coffee,” I said.

‘ “Good, Pilar, good,” he said. And we went up into the town
to the plaza, and those were the last people who were shot in the
village.’

‘What happened to the others?’ Robert Jordan asked. ‘Were
there no other fascists in the village ? ’

"Que va, were there no other fascists? There were more than
twenty. Rut none was shot.’

100

‘What was done?’

‘Pablo had them beaten to death with flails and thrown from
the top of the cliff unto the river.’

‘All twenty?’

‘I will tell you. It is not so simple. And in my life never do I
wish to see such a scene as the flailing to death in the plaza on
the top of the cliff above the river.

‘The town is built on the high bank above the river and there is
a square there with a fountain and there are benches and there
are big trees that give a shade for the benches. The balconies of
the houses look out on the plaza. Six streets enter on the plaza and
there is an arcade from the houses that goes around the plaza so
that one can walk in the shade of the arcade when the sun is
hot. On three sides of the plaza is the arcade and on the fourth
side is the walk shaded by the trees beside the edge of the cliff
with, far below, the river. It is three hundred feet down to the
river.

‘Pablo organized it all as he did the attack on the barracks. First
he had the entrances to the streets blocked off with carts as though
to organize the plaza for a capea. For an amateur bull fight. The
fascists were all held in the Ayuntamiento , the city hall, which
was the largest building on one side of the plaza. It was there the
clock was set in the wall and it was in the buildings under the
arcade that the club of the fascists was. And under the arcade on
the sidewalks in front of their club was where they had their
chairs and tables for their club. It was there, before the movement,
that they were accustomed to take their aperitifs. The chairs and
the tables were of wicker. It looked like a cafe but was more
elegant.’

‘But was there no fighting to take them?’

‘Pablo had them seized in the night before he assaulted the bar-
racks. But he had already surrounded the barracks. They were all
seized in their homes at the same hour the attack started. That
was intelligent. Pablo is an organizer. Otherwise he would have
had people attacking him at his flanks and at his rear while he
was assaulting the barracks of the guardia civil .

‘Pablo is very intelligent but very brutal. He has this of the
village well planned and well ordered. Listen. After the assault
was successful, and the last four guards had surrendered, and he
had shot them against the wall, and we had drunk coffee at the

IOI

cafe that always opened earliest in the morning by the corner from
which the early bus left, he proceeded to the organization of the
plaza. Carts were piled exactly as for a capea except that the side
toward the river was not enclosed. That were left open. Then
Pablo ordered the priest to confess the fascists and give them the
necessary sacraments.’

* Where was this done?’

‘In the Ayuntamiento , as I said. There was a great crowd out-
side and while this was going on inside with the priest, there was
some levity outside and shouting of obscenities, but most of the
people were very serious and respectful. Those who made jokes
were those who were already drunk from the celebration of the
taking of the barracks and there were useless characters who
would have been drunk at any time. .

‘While the priest was engaged in these dimes, Pablo organized
those in the plaza into two lines.

‘He placed them in two lines as you would place men for a rope-
pulling contest, or as they stand in a city to watch the ending of a
bicycle road race with just room for the cyclists to pass between, or
as men stood to allow the passage of a holy image in a procession.
Two metres was left between the lines and they extended from
the door of the Ayuntamiento clear across the plaza to the edge of
the cliff. So that, from the doorway of the Ayuntamiento , looking
across the plaza, one coming out would see two solid lines of
people waiting.

‘They were armed with flails such as are used to beat out the
grain and they were a good flail’s length apart. All did not have
flails, as enough flails could not be obtained. But most had flails
obtained from the store of Don Guillermo Martin, who was a
fascist and sold all sorts of agricultural impliments. And those
who did not have flails had heavy herdsman’s clubs, or ox-goads,
and some had wooden pitchforks; those with wooden tines that
are used to fork the chaff and straw into the air after the flailing.
Some had sickles and reaping hooks but these Pablo placed at the
far end where the lines reached the edge of the cliff.

‘These lines were quiet and it was a clear day, as to-day is clear,
and there were clouds high in the sky, as there are now, and the
plaza was not yet dusty for there had been a heavy dew in the
night, and the trees cast a shadow over the men in the lines and
you could hear the water running from the brass pipe in the

102

mouth of the lion and falling into the bowl of the fountain where
the women bring the water jars to fill them.

‘Only near the Ayuntamiento , where the priest was complying
with his duties with the fascists, was there any ribaldry, and that
came from those worthless ones who, as I said, were already
drunk and were crowded around the windows shouting obsceni-
ties and jokes in bad taste in through the iron bars of the windows.
Most of the men in the lines were waiting quietly and I heard one
say to another, “Will there be women?*'

‘And another said, “I hope to Christ, no.”

‘Then one said, “Here is the woman of Pablo. Listen, Pilar.
Will there be women?”

‘I looked at him and he was a peasant dressed in his Sunday
jacket and sweating heavily and I said, “No, Joaquin. There are
no women. We are not killing the women. Why should we kill
their women?”

‘And he said, “Thanks be to Christ, there are no women and
when does it start?”

‘And I said, “As soon as the priest finishes.”

‘ “And the priest?”

* “I don’t know,*' I told him, and I saw his face working and
the sweat coming down on his forehead. “I have never killed a
man,” he said.

‘ “Then you will learn,” the peasant next to him said. “But I
do not think one blow with this will kill a man,” and he held his
flail in both hands and looked at it with doubt.

* “That is the beauty of it,” another peasant said. “There must
be many blows.”

‘ tL They have taken Valladolid. They have Avila,” someone
said. “I heard that before we came into town.”

‘ “ They will never take this town. This town is oyrs. We have
struck ahead of them,*’ I said. “Pablo is not one to wait for them
to strike.”

‘ “Pablo is able,” another said. “But in this finishing off of the
cwiles he was egoistic. Don’t you think so. Pilar?”

‘ “Yes,” I s£id. “But now all are participating in this.”

* “Yes,” he said. “It is well organized. But why do we not hear
more news of the movement?”

‘ “Pablo cut the telephone wires before the assault on the bar-
racks. They are not yet repaired.”

4 “Ah,” he said. “It is for this we hear nothing. I had my news
from the roadmender’s station early this morning.”

‘ “Why is this done thus, Pilar?” he said to me.

4 “To save bullets,” I said. “And that each man should have his
share in the responsibility.”

4 “That it should start then. That it should start.” And I looked
at him and Saw that he was crying.

4 “Why are you crying, Joaquin? ” I asked him. “This is not to
cry about.”

4 “I cannot help it, Pilar,” he said. “I have never killed anyone.”

Tf you have not seen the day of revolution in a small town
where all know all in the town and always have known all, you
have seen nothing. And on this day most of the men in the double
line across the plaza wore the clothes in which they worked in the
fields, having come into town hurriedly, bul some, not knowing
how one should dress for the first day of a movement, wore their
clothes for Sundays or holidays, and these, seeing that the others,
including those who had attacked the barracks, wore their oldest
clothes, were ashamed of being wrongly dressed. But they did not
like to take off their jackets for fear of losing them, or that they
might be stolen by the worthless ones, and so they stood, sweating
in the sun and waiting for it to commence.

‘Then the wind rose and the dust was now dry in the plaza for
the men walking and standing and shuffling had loosened it and
it commenced to blow and a man in a dark blue Sunday jacket
shouted “Agua! Agua!” and the caretaker of the plaza, whose
duty it was to sprinkle the plaza each morning with a hose, came
and turned the hose on and commenced to lay the dust at the edge
of the plaza, and then toward the centre. Then the two lines fell
back and let him lay the dust*over the centre of the plaza; the hose
sweeping in wide arcs and the water glistening in the sun and the
men leaning on their flails or the clubs or the white- wood pitch-
forks and watching the sweep of the stream of water. And then,
when the plaza was nicely moistened and the dust settled, the
lines formed up again and a peasant shouted, 4 ‘When do we get
the first fascist? When does the first one come out of the box?”

4 “Soon,” Pablo shouted from the door of the Ayuntamiento .
“Soon the first one comes out.” His voice was hoarse from shout-
ing in the assault and from the smoke of the barracks.

4 “What's the delay?” someone asked. *

104

‘ “They’re still occupied with their sins,” Pablo shouted.

4 “Clearly, there are twenty of them,” a man said.

4 “More,” said another.

c “Among twenty there are many sins to recount.”

* “Yes, but I think it’s a trick to gain time. Surely facing such
an emergency one could not remember one’s sins except for the
biggest.”

* “Then have patience. For with more than twenty of them
there are enough of the biggest sins to take some time.”

* “I have patience,” said the other. “But it is better to get it over
with. Both for them and for us. It is July and there is much work.
We have harvested but we have not threshed. We are not yet in
the time of fairs and festivals.”

4 “But this will be a fair and festival to-day,” another said. “The
Fair of Liberty and from this day, when these are extinguished,
the town and the land are ours.”

e “We thresh fascists to-day,*’ said one, “and out of the chaff
comes the freedom of this pueblo.”

4 “We must administer it well to deserve it,” said another.
“Pilar,” he said to me, “when do we have a meeting for organ-
ization?”

‘ “Immediately after this is completed,” I told him. “In the
same building of the Ayuntamiento .”

‘I was wearing one of the three-cornered patent leather hats of
the guardia civil as a joke and I had put the hammer down on the
pistol, holding it with my thumb to lower it as I pulled on the
trigger as seemed natural, and the pistol was held in a rope I had
around my waist, the long barrel stuck under the rope. And when
I put it on the joke seemed very good to me, although afterwards
I wished I had taken the holster of the pistol instead of the hat.
But one of the men in the line said to me, “Pilar, daughter. It
seems to me bad taste for thee to wear that hat. Now we have
finished with such things as the guardia civil”

4 “Then,” I said, “I will take it off.” And I did.

4 “Give it to me,” he said. “It should be destroyed.”

‘And as we were at the far end of the line where the walk runs
along the cliff by the river, he took the hat in his hand and sailed
it off over the cliff with the motion a herdsman makes throwing a
stone underhand at the bulls to herd them. The hat sailed far out
into space and we could see it smaller and smaller, the patent
105 -

leather shining in the clear air, sailing down to the river. I looked
back over the square, and at all the windows and all the balconies
there were people crowded and there was the double line of men
across the square to the doorway of the Ayuntamtento and the
crowd swarmed outside against the windows of that building
and there was the noise of many people talking, and then I heard
a shout and someone said, “Here comes the first one,” and it was
Don Benito Garcia, the Mayor, and he came out bareheaded
walking slowly from the door and down the porch and nothing
happened; and he walked between the line of men with the
flails and nothing happened. He passed two men, four men, eight
•men, ten men and -nothing happened and he was walking be-
tween that line of men, his head up, his fat face grey, his eyes
looking ahead and then flickering from side to side and walking
steadily. And nothing happened.

‘From a balcony someone cried out, “jQu£ pasa, cobardes?
What is the matter, cowards?” and still Don Benito walked along
between the men and nothing happened. Then I saw a man three
men down from where I was standing, and his face was working
and he was biting his lips and his hands were white on his flail.
I saw him looking toward Don Benito, watching him come on.
And still nothing happened. Then, just before Don Benito came
abreast of this man, the man raised his flail high so that it struck
the man beside him and smashed a blow at Don Benito that hit
him on the side of the head and Don Benito looked at him and
the man struck again and shouted, “That for you, Cabron ,” and
the blow hit Don Benito in the face and he raised his hands to
his face and they beat him until he fell and the man who had
struck him first called to others to help him and he pulled on the
collar of Don Benito’s shirt and others took hold of his arms and
with his face in the dust of the plaza, they dragged him over the
walk to the edge of the cliff and threw him over and into the
river. And the man who hit him first was kneeling by the edge
of the cliff looking over after him and saying, “The Cabron ! The
Cabron; Oh, the Cabron J” He was a tenant of Don Benito and
they had never gotten along together. There had been a dispute
about a piece of land by the river that Don Benito had taken from
this man and let to another and this man had long hated him.
This man did not join the line again but sat by the cliff looking
down where Don Benito had fallen.

106

‘After Don Benito no one would come out. There was no noise
now in the plaza as all were waiting to see who it was that would
come out. Then a drunkard shouted in a great voice, “ Que saiga
el torol Let the bull out !”

‘Then someone from by the windows of the Ayuntamiento
yelled, “They won’t move ! They are all praying !”

‘Another drunkard shouted, “Pull them out. Come on, pull
them out. The time for praying is finished.”

‘But none came out and then I saw a man coming out of the
door.

‘It was Don Federico Gonzalez, who owned the mill and feed
store and was a fascist of the first order. He was tall and thin and
his hair was brushed over the top of his head from one side to the
other to cover a baldness and he wore a nightshirt that was tucked
into his trousers. He was barefooted as when he had been taken
from his home and he walked ahead of Pablo holding his hands
above his head, and Pablo walked behind him with the barrels of
his shotgun pressing against the back of Don Federico Gonzalez
until Don Federico entered the double line. But when Pablo left
him and returned to the door of the Ayuntamiento , Don Federico
could not walk forward, and stood there, his eyes turned up to
heaven and his hands reaching up as though they would grasp
the sky,

‘ “He has no legs to walk,” someone said.

‘ “What’s the matter, Don Federico? Can’t you walk?” some-
one shouted to him. But Don Federico stood there with his hands
up and only his lips were moving.

‘ “ Get on,” Pablo shouted to him from the steps. “Walk.”

‘Don Federico stood there and could not move. One of the
drunkards poked him in the backside with a flail handle and Don
Federico gave a quick jump as a balky horse might, but still stood
in the same place, his hands up, and his eyes up toward the sky,

‘Then the peasant who stood beside me said, “This is shameful.
I have nothing against him but such a spectacle mus| terminate.”
So he walked down the line and pushed through to where Don
Federico was standing and said, “With your permission,” and
hit him a great blow alongside of the head with a club.

‘Then Don Federico dropped his hands and put them over the
top of his head where the bald place was and with his head bent
and covered by his hands, the thin long hairs that covered the
107

bald place escaping through his fingers, he ran fast through the
double line with flails falling on his back and shoulders until he
fell and those at the end of the line picked him up and swung
him over the cliff. Never did he open his mouth from the moment
he came out pushed by the shotgun of Pablo. His only difficulty
was to move forward. It was as though he had no command of
his legs.

‘After Don Federico, I saw there was a concentration of the
hardest men at the end of the lines by the edge of the cliff and I
left there and I went to the arcade of the Ayuntamiento and
pushed aside two drunkards and looked in the window. In the
big room of the Ayuntamiento they were all kneeling in a half
circle praying and the priest was kneeling and praying with
them. Pablo and one named Cuatro Dedos, Four Fingers, a
cobbler, who was much with Pablo then, and two others were
standing with shotguns and Pablo said to the priest, “Who goes
now?” and the priest went on praying and did not answer him.

* “Listen, you,” Pablo said to the priest in his hoarse voice,
“Who goes now? Who is ready now?”

‘The priest would not speak to Pablo and acted as though he
were not there and I could see Pablo was becoming very angry.

* “Let us all go together,” Don Ricardo Montalvo, who was a
land-owner, said to Pablo, raising his head and stopping praying
to speak.

4 “ Que va ,” said Pablo. “One at a time as you are ready.”

4 “Then I go now,” Don Ricardo said. “I’ll never be any more
ready.” The priest blessed him as he spoke and blessed him again
as he stood up, without interrupting his praying, and held up a
crucifix for Don Ricardo to kiss and Don Ricardo kissed it and
then turned and said to Pablo, “Nor ever again as ready. You
Cabrdn of the bad milk. Let us go.”

‘Don Ricardo was a short man with grey hair and a thick neck
and he had a shirt on with no collar. He was bow-legged from
much hors<|back riding. “Good-bye,” he said to all those who
were kneeling. “Don’t be sad. To die is nothing. The only bad
thing is to die at the hands of this canalla . Don’t touch me,” he
said to Pablo. “Don’t touch me with your shotgun.”

4 He walked out of the front of the Ayuntamiento with his grey
hair and his small grey eyes and his thick neck ldoking very short
and angry. He looked at the double line of peasants and he spat

108

on the ground. He could spit actual saliva which, in such a cir-
cumstance, as you should know, Ingles , is very rare and he said,
“ Arriba Espana! Down with the miscalled Republic and I ob-
scenity in the milk o£ your fathers.’*

‘So they clubbed him to death very quickly because of the in-
sult, beating him as soon as he reached the first of the men, beat-
ing him as he tried to walk with his head up, beating him until
he fell, and chopping at him with reaping hooks and the sickles,
and many men bore him to the edge of the cliff to throw him
over and there was blood now on their hands and on their cloth-
ing, and now began to be the feeling that these who came out
were truly enemies and should be killed.

‘Until Don Ricardo came out with that fierceness and calling
those insults, many in the line would have given much, I am sure,
never to have been in the line. And if anyone had shouted from
the line, “Come, let us pardon the rest of them. Now they have
had their lesson,” I am sure most would have agreed.

‘But Don Ricardo with all his bravery did a great disservice to
the others. For he aroused the men in the line and where, before,
they were performing a duty and with no great taste for it, now
they were angry, and the difference was apparent.

‘ “Let the priest out and the thing will go faster,” someone
shouted.

‘ “Let out the priest,”

‘ “We’ve had three thieves, let us have the priest.”

* “Two thieves,” a short peasant said to the man who had
shouted. “It was two thieves with Our Lord.”

‘ “Whose Lord?” the man said, his face apgry and red.

‘ “In the manner of speaking it is said Our Lord.”

‘ “He isn’t my Lord; not in joke,” said the other. “And thee
hadst best watch thy mouth if thou dost not want to walk between
the lines.”

‘ “I am as good a Libertarian republican as thou,” the short
peasant said. “I struck Don Ricardo across the mouth. I struck
Don Federico across the back. I missed Don Benito. But I say
Our Lord is the formal way of speaking of the man in question
and that it was two thieves.”

* “I obscenity in the milk of thy Republicanism. You speak of
Don this and Don that.”

‘ “Here are they so called.”

109

* “Not by me, the cabrones. And thy Lord - Hi ! Here comes
a new one ! ”

‘It was then that we saw a disgraceful sight, for the man who
walked out of the doorway of the Ayuntamiento was Don
Faustino Rivero, the oldest son of his father, Don Celestino
Rivero, a land-owner. He was tall and his hair was yellow and it
was freshly combed back from his forehead for he always carried
a comb in his pocket and he had combed his hair now before
coming out. He was a great annoyer of girls, and he was a coward,
and he had always wished to be an amateur bullfighter. He went
much with gipsies and with bullfighters and with bull raisers
and delighted to wear the Andalucian costume, but he had no
courage and was considered a joke. One time he was announced
to appear in an amateur benefit fight for the old people’s home in
Avila and to kill a bull from on horseback in the Andalucian
style, which he had spent much time practising, and when he
had seen the size of the bull that had been substituted for him in
place of the little one, weak in the legs, he had picked out himself,
he had said he was sick and, some said, put three fingers down
his throat to make himself vomit.

‘When the lines saw him, they commenced to shout, “Ho/a,
Don Faustino. Take care not to vomit.”

‘ “Listen to me, Don Faustino. There are beautiful girls over
the cliff.”

* “Don Faustino. Wait a minute and we will bring out a bull
bigger than the other.” »

‘And another shouted, “Listen to me, Don Faustino. Hast thou
ever heard speak of death?”

‘Don Faustino stood there, still acting brave. He was still under
the impulse that had made him announce to the others that he
was going out. It was the same impulse that had made him an-
nounce himself for the bullfight. That had made him believe and
hope that he could be an amateur matador. Now he was inspired
by the exanSple of Don Ricardo and he stood there looking both
handsome and brave and he made his face scornful. But he could
not speak.

‘ “Come, Don Faustino,” someone called from the line. “Come,
Don Faustino. Here is the biggest bull of all.”

‘Don Faustino stood looking out and I think, as he looked, that
there was no pity for him on either side of the line. Still he looked

no

both handsome and superb; but time was shortening and there
was only one direction to go.

4 “Don Faustino,” someone called. “What are you waiting for,
Don Faustino?”

4 “He is preparing to vomit,” someone said and the lines
laughed.

4 “Don Faustino,” a peasant called. “Vomit if it will give thee
pleasure. To me it is all the same.”

‘Then, as we watched, Don Faustino looked along the lines
and across the square to thfe cliff and then when he saw the cliff
and the emptiness beyond, he turned quickly and ducked back
toward the entrance of the Ayuntamiento,

‘All the lines roared and someone shouted in a high voice,
“Where do you go, Don Faustino? Where do you go?”

4 “He goes to throw .up,” shouted another and they all laughed
again.

‘Then we saw Don Faustino coming out again with Pablo
behind him with the shotgun. All of his style was gone now. The
sight of the lines had taken away his type and his style and he
came out now with Pablo behind him as though Pablo were
cleaning a street and Don Faustino was what he was pushing
ahead of him. Don Faustino came out now and he was crossing
himself and praying and then he put his hands in front of his
eyes and walked down the steps toward the lines.

4 “Leave him alone,” someone shouted. “Don’t touch him.”

‘The lines understood and no one made a move to touch Don
Faustino and, with his hands shaking and held in front of his
eyes, and, with his mouth moving, he walked along between the
lines.

‘No one said anything and no one touched him and, when he
was halfway through the lines, he could go no farther and fell to
his knees.

‘No one struck him. I was walking along parallel to the line to
see what happened to him and a peasant leaned down and lifted
him to his feet and said, “Get up, Don Faustino, and keep walk-
ing. The bull has not yet come out.”

‘Don Faustino could not walk alone and the peasant in a black
smock helped him on one side and another peasant in a black
smock and herdman’s boots helped him on the other, supporting
him by the arms and Don Faustino walking along between the

in

lines with his hands over his eyes, his lips never quiet, and his
yellow hair slicked on his head and shining in the sun, and as he
passed the peasants would say, “Don Faustino, buen provecho.
Don Faustino, that you should have a good appetite,” and others
said, “Don Faustino, a sus ordenes, Don Faustino at your orders,”
and one, who had failed at bullfighting himself, said, “Don
Faustino, Matador, a sus ordens ,” and another said, “Don Faus-
tino, there are beautiful girls in heaven, Don Faustino.” And
they walked Don Faustino through the lines, holding him close
on either side, holding him up as he walked, with him with his
hands over his eyes. But he must have looked through his fingers,
because when they came to the edge of the cliff with him, he knelt
again, throwing himself down and clutching the ground and
holding to the grass, saying, “No, No. No. Please. NO. Please.
Please. No. No.”

‘Then the peasants who were with him and the others, the hard
ones of the end of the lines, squatted quickly behind him as he
knelt, and gave him a rushing push and he was over the edge
without ever having been beaten and you heard him crying loud
and high as he fell.

‘It was then I knew that the lines had become cruel and it was
first the insults of Don Ricardo and second the cowardice of Don
Faustino that had made them so.

6 “Let us have another,” a peasant called out and another
peasant slapped him on the back and said, “Don Faustino ! What
a thing ! Don Faustino ! ”

* “He’s seen the big bull now,” another said. “Throwing up
will never help him, now.”

‘ “In my life,” another peasant said, “in my life I’ve never seen
a thing like Don Faustino.”

* “There are others,” another peasant said. “Have patience.
Who knows what we may yet see?”

‘ “There may be giants and dwarfs,” the first peasant said.
“There may* be Negroes and rare beasts from Africa. But for me
never, never will there be anything like Don Faustino. But let’s
have another one \ Come on. Let’s have another one !”

‘The drunkards were handing around bottles of anis and cognac
that they had looted from the bar of the club of the fascists, drink-
ing them down like wine, and many of the men in the lines were
beginning to be a little drunk, too, from drinking after the strong

1 12

emotion of Don Benito, Don Federico, Don Ricardo, and especi-
ally Don Faustino. Those who did not drink from the bottles of
liquor were drinking from leather wineskins that were passed
about and one handed a wineskin to me and I took a long drink,
letting the wine run cool down my throat from the leather bota
for I was very thirsty, too.

4 “To kill gives much thirst,” the man with the wineskin said
to me.

4 44 Que va” I said. “Hast thou killed?”

4 “We have killed four,” he said proudly. “Not counting the
civiles . Is it true that thee killed one of the civiles, Pilar?”

4 “Not one,” I said. “I shot into the smoke when the wall fell,
as did the others. That is all.”

4 “Where got thee the pistol, Pilar?”

4 “From Pablo. Pablo gave it to me after he kill the civiles

4 “Killed he them with this pistol?”

4 “With no other,” I said. “And then he armed me with it.”

4 “Can I see it, Pilar ? Can I hold it? ”

4 “Why not, man?” I said, and I took it out from under the
rope and handed it to him. But I was wondering why no one else
had come out and just then who should come out but Don Guil-
lermo Martin from whose store the flails, the herdsman’s clubs,
and the wooden pitchforks had been taken. Don Guillermo was
a fascist but otherwise there was nothing against him.

‘It is true he paid litde to those who made the flails but he
charged little for them too and if one did not wish to buy flails
from Don Guillermo, it was possible to make them for nothing
more than the cost of the wood and the leather. He had a rude
way of speaking and he was undoubtedly a fascist and a member
of their club and he sat at noon and at evening in the cane chairs
of their club to read El Debate , to have his shoes shined, and to
drink vermouth and seltzer and eat roasted almonds, dried
shrimps, and anchovies. But one does not kill for that, and I am
sure if it had been for the insults of Don Ricardo Montalvo
and the lamentable spectacle of Don Faustino, and the drinking
consequent on the emotion of them and the others, someone
would have shouted, “That Don Guillermo should go in peace.
We have his flails. Let him go.”

‘Because the people of this town are as kind as they can be cruel
and they have a natural sense of justice and a desire to Mo that

XI 3

which is right. But cruelty had entered into the lines and also
drunkenness or the beginning of drunkenness and the lines were
not as they were when Don Benito had come out. I do not know
how it is in other countries, and no one cares more for the pleasure
of drinking than I do, but in Spain drunkenness, when produced
by other elements than wine, is a thing of great ugliness and the
people do things that they would not have done. Is it not so in
your country, Ingles ?’

‘It is so/ Robert Jordan said. ‘When I was seven years old and
going with my mother to attend a wedding in the state of Ohio at
which I was to be the boy of a pair of boy and girl who carried
flowers — *

‘Did you do that?’ asked Maria. ‘How nice V

‘In this town a Negro was hanged to a lamp-post and later
burned. It was an arc light. A light which lowered from the post
to the pavement. And he was hoisted, first by the mechanism
which was used to hoist the arc light but this broke — *

‘A Negro/ Maria said. ‘How barbarous !’

‘Were the people drunk?’ asked Pilar. ‘Were they drunk thus
to burn a Negro?’

‘I do not know/ Robert Jordan said. ‘Because I saw it only
looking out from under the blinds of a window in the house
which stood on the comer where the arc light was. The street was
full of people and when they lifted the Negro up for the second
time

‘If you had only seven years and were in a house, you could not
tell if they were drunk or not/ Pilar said.

‘As I said, when they lifted the Negro up for the second time,
my mother pulled me away from the window, so I saw no more/
Robert Jordan said. ‘But since I have had experiences which
demonstrate that drunkenness is the same in my country. It is
ugly and brutal/

‘You were too young at seven/ Maria said. ‘You were too young
for such things. I have never seen a Negro except in a circus.
Unless the Moors are Negroes/

‘Some are Negroes and some are not/ Pilar said. ‘I can talk to
you of the Moors/

‘Not as I can/ Maria said. ‘Nay, not as I can/

‘Don’t speak of such things/ Pilar said. ‘It is unhealthy. Where
were we?*

‘Speaking of the drunkenness of the lines/ Robert Jordan said.
‘Go on.’

‘It is not fair to say drunkenness,’ Pilar said. ‘For, yet, they were
a long way from drunkenness. But already there was a change in
them, and when Don Guillermo came out, standing straight,
near-sighted, grey-headed, of medium height, with a shirt with
a collar button but no collar, standing there and crossing himself
once and looking ahead, but seeing little without his glasses, but
walking forward well and calmly, he was an appearance to excite
pity. But someone shouted from the line, “Here, Don Guillermo.
Up here, Don Guillermo. In this direction. Here we all have your
products.”

‘They had had such success joking at Don Faustino that they
could not see, now, that Don Guillermo was a different thing,
and if Don Guillermo was to be killed, he should be killed
quickly and with dignity.

‘ “Don Guillermo,” another shouted. “Should we send to the
house for thy spectacles?”

‘Don Guillermo’s house was no house, since he had not much
money and was only a fascist to be a snob and to console himself
that he must work for little, running a wooden-implement shop.
He was a fascist, too, from the religiousness of his wife which he
accepted as his own due to his love for her. He lived in an apart-
ment in the building three houses down the^square and when Don
Guillermo stood there, looking near-sightedly at the lines, the
double lines he knew he must enter, a woman started to scream
from the balcony of the apartment wheire he lived. She could see
him from the balcony and she was his wife.

‘ “Guillermo,” she cried. “Guillermo. Wait and I will be with
thee.”

‘Don Guillermo turned his head toward where the shouting
came from. He could not see her. He tried to say something but
he could not. Then he waved his hand in the direction the woman
had called from and started to walk between the lines.

Guillermo!” she cried. “Guillermo! Oh, Guillermo!” She
was holding her hands on the rail of the balcony and shaking
back and forth. “Guillermo !”

‘Don Guillermo waved his hand again toward the noise and
walked into the lines with his head up and you would not have
known what he was feeling except for the colour of his face.

1 15

‘Then some drunkard yelled, “Guillermo I ” from the lines,
imitating the high cracked voice of his wife and Don Guillermo
rushed toward the man, blindly, with tears now running down
his cheeks and the man hit him hard across the face with his flail
and^ Don Guillermo sat down from the force of the blow and sat
there crying, but not from fear, while the drunkards beat him
and one drunkard jumped on top of him, astride his shoulders,
and beat him with a bottle. After this many of the men left the
lines and their places were taken by the drunkards who had been
jeering and saying things in bad taste through the windows of
the Ayuntamiento.

‘I myself had felt much emotion at the shooting of the guardia
civil by Pablo,’ Pilar said. ‘It was a thing of great ugliness, but I
had thought if this is how it must be, this is how it must be, and
at least there was no cruelty, only the depriving of life which, as
we all have learned in these years, is a thing of ugliness but also a
necessity to do if we are to win, and to preserve the Republic.

‘When the square had been closed off and the lines formed, I
had admired and understood it as a conception of Pablo, although
it seemed to me to be somewhat fantastic and that it would be
necessary for all that was to be done to be done in good taste if it
were not to be repugnant. Certainly if the fascists were to be
executed by the people, it was better for all the people to have a
part in it, and I wished to share the guilt as much as any, just as
I hoped to share in the benefits when the town should be ours. But
after Don Guillermo I felt a feeling of shame and distaste, and
with the coming of the drunkards and the worthless ones into the
lines, and the abstention of those who left the lines as a protest
after Don Guillermo, I wished that I might disassociate myself
altogether from the lines, and I walked away, across the square,
and sat down bn a bench under one of the big trees that gave
shade there.

‘Two peasants from the lines walked over, talking together,
and one of them called to me, “What passes with thee. Pilar?”

* “Nothing, man,” I told him.

‘ “Yes,” he said. “Speak. What passes?”

‘ “I think that I have a belly-full,” I told him.

‘ “Us, too,” he said and they both sat down on the bench. One
of them had a leather wineskin and he- handed it to me.

‘ “Rinse out thy mouth,” he said and the other said, going on
116

with the talking they had been engaged in, “The worst is that it
will bring bad luck. Nobody can tell me that such things as the
killing of Don Guillermo in that fashion will not bring bad luck.”

'Then the other said, “If it is necessary to kill them all, and I
am not convinced of that necessity, let them be killed decently
and without mockery.”

* “Mockery is justified in the case of Don Faustino,” the other
said. “Since he was always a farcer and was never a serious man.
But to mock such a serious man as Don Guillermo is beyond all
right.”

* “I have a belly-full,” I told him, and it was literally true be-
cause I felt an actual sickness in all of me inside and a sweating
and a nausea as though I had swallowed bad sea food.

* “Then, nothing,” the one peasant said. “We will take no
further part in it. But I wonder what happens in the other towns.”

* “They have not repaired the telephone wires yet,” I said. “It
is a lack that should be remedied.”

4 “Clearly,” he said. “Who knows but what we might be better
employed putting the town into a state of defence than massa-
cring people with this slowness and brutality.”

4 “I will go to speak with Pablo,” I told them and I stood up
from the bench and started toward the arcade that led to the door
of the Ayuntamiento from where the lines spread across the
square. The lines now were neither straight nor orderly and there
was much and very grave drunkenness. Two men had fallen
down and lay on their backs in the middle of the square and
were passing a bottle back and forth between them. One would
take a drink and then shout, “ Viva la Anar quia ! ” lying on his
back and shouting as though he were a madman. He had a red-
and-black handkerchief around his neck. The other shouted,
“ Viva la Libert ad l" and kicked his feet in the air and then bel-
lowed, “Viva la Libertadl” again. He had a red-and-black hand-
kerchief too and he waved it in one hand and waved the bottle
with the other.

4 A peasant who had left the lines and now stood in the shade
of the arcade looked at them in disgust and said, “They should
shout, ‘Long live drunkenness/ That's all they believe in.”

4 “They don’t believe even’ in that,” another peasant said.
“Those neither understand nor believe in anything.”

‘Just then, one of the drunkards got to his feet and raised both

arms with his fists clenched over his head and shouted, “Long
live Anarchy and Liberty and I obscenity in the milk of the
Republic !”

‘The other drunkard, who was still lying on his back, took
hold of the ankle of the drunkard who was shouting and rolled
over, so that the shouting drunkard fell with him, and they rolled
over together and then sat up and the one who had pulled the
other down put his arm around the shouter’s neck and then
handed the shouter a bottle and kissed the red-and-black handker-
chief he wore and they both drank together.

‘Just then, a yelling went up from the lines and, looking up the
arcade, I could not see who it was that was coming out because
the man's head did not show above the heads of those crowded
about the door of the Ayuntamiento. All I could see was that
someone was being pushed out by Pablo and Cuatro Dedoes with
their shotguns but I could not see who it was and I moved on
close toward the lines where they were packed against the door
to try to see.

‘There was much pushing now and the chairs and the tables
of the fascists’ cafe had been overturned except for one table on
which a drunkard was lying with his head hanging down and his
mouth open and I picked up a chair and set it against one of the
pillars and mounted on it so that I could see over the heads of the
crowd.

‘The man who was being pushed out by Pablo and Cuatro
Dedos was Don Anastasio Rivas, who was an undoubted fascist
and the fattest man in the town. He was a grain buyer and the^
agent for several insurance companies and he also loaned money
at High rates of interest. Standing on the chair, I saw him walk
down the steps and toward the lines, his fat neck bulging over
the back of the collar band of his shift, and his bald head shining
in the sun, but he never entered them because there was a shout,
not as of different men shouting, but of all of them. It was an
ugly noise and was the cry of the drunken lines all yelling to-
gether and the lines broke with the rush of men toward him and
I saw Don Anastasio throw himself down with his hands over
his head and then you could not see him for the men piled on top
of him. And when the men got up from him, Don Anastasio was
dead from his head being beaten against the stone flags of the
paving of the arcade and there were no more lines but only a mob.

118

‘ “We’re going in,” they commenced to shout. “We’re going
in after them.”

‘ “He’s too heavy to carry,” a man kicked at the body o£ Don
Anastasio, who was lying there on his face. “Let him stay there.”

* “Why should we lug that tub of tripe to the cliff? Let him lie
there.”

* “We are going to enter and finish with them inside,” a man
shouted. “We’re going in.”

4 “Why wait all day in the sun?” another yelled. “Come on.
Let us go.”

‘The mob was now pressing into the arcade. They were shout-
ing and pushing and they made a noise now like an animal and
they were all shouting, “Open up ! Open up ! Open up !” for the
guards had shut the doors of the Ayuntamiento when the lines
broke.

‘Standing on the chair, I could see in through the barred win-
dow into the hall of the Ayuntamiento and in there it was as it
had been before. The priest was standing, and those who were
left were kneeling in a half circle around him and they were all
praying. Pablo was sitting on the big table in front of the Mayor’s
chair with his shotgun slung over his back. His legs were hanging
down from the table and he was rolling a cigarette. Cuatro Dedos
was sitting in the Mayor’s chair with his feet on the table and he
was smoking a cigarette. All the guards were sitting in different
chairs of the administration, holding their guns. The key to the
big door was on the table beside Pablo.

, ‘The mob was shouting, “Open up ! Open up 1 Open up !” as
though it were a chant and Pablo was sitting there as though he
did not hear them. He said something to the priest but I could not
hear what he said for the noise of the mob.

‘The priest, as before, did not answer him but kept on praying.
With many people pushing me, I moved the chair close against
the wall, shoving it ahead of me as they shoved me from behind.
I stood on the chair with my face close against the bars of the
window and held on by the bars. A man climbed on the chair too
and stood with his arms around mine, holding the wider bars.

‘ “The chair will break,” I said to him.

‘ “What does it matter?” he said. “Look at them. Look at them
pray.”

‘His breath on my neck smelled like the smell of the mob, sour,

XI 9

like vomit on paving stones and the smell of drunkenness, and
then he put his mouth against the opening in the bars with his
head over my shoulder, and shouted, “Open up ! Open up !’* and
it was as though the mob were on my back as a devil is on your
back in a dream.

‘Now the mob was pressed tight against the door so that those
in front were being crushed by all the others who were pressing
and from the square a big drunkard in a black smock with a red-
and-black handkerchief around his neck ran and threw himself
against the press of the mob and fell forward on to the pressing
men and then stood up and backed away and then ran forward
again and threw himself against the backs of those men who were
pushing, shouting, “Long live me and long live Anarchy.’ ’

‘As I watched, this man turned away from the crowd and went
and sat down and drank from a bottle and then, while he was
sitting down, he saw Don Anastasio, who was still lying face
down on the stones, but much trampled now, and the drunkard
got up and went over to Don Anastasio and leaned over and
poured out of the bottle on to the head of Don Anastasio and on
to his clothes, and then he took a matchbox out of his pocket and
lit several matches, trying to make a fire with Don Anastasio. But
the wind was blowing hard now and it blew the matches out and
after a little the big drunkard sat there by Don Anastasio, shaking
his head and drinking out of the bottle and every once in a while,
leaning over and patting Don Anastasio on the shoulders of his
dead body.

‘All this time the mob was shouting to open up and the man on
the chair with me was holding tight to the bars of the window
and shouting to open up until it deafened me with his voice roar-
ing past my ear and his breath foul on me and I looked away from
watching the drunkard who had been trying to set fire to Don
Anastasio and into the hall of the Ayuntamiento again; and it was
just as it had been. They were still praying as they had been, the
men all kneeling, with their shirts open, some with their heads
down, others with their heads up, looking toward the priest and
toward the crucifix that he held, and the priest praying fast and
hard and looking out over their heads, and behind them Pablo,
with his cigarette now lighted, was sitting there on the table
swinging his legs, his shotgun slung over his back, and he was
playing with the key.

120

‘I saw Pablo speak to the priest again, leaning forward from
the table and I could not hear what he said for the shouting. But
the priest did not answer him but went on praying. Then a man
stood up from among the half circle of those who were praying
and I saw he wanted to go out. It was Don Jose Castro, whom
everyone called Don Pepe, a confirmed fascist, and a dealer in
horses, and he stood up now small, neat-looking, even unshaven
and wearing a pyjama top tucked into a pair of grey-striped
trousers. He kissed the crucifix and the priest blessed him and he
stood up and looked at Pablo and jerked his head toward the door.

‘Pablo shook his head and went on smoking. I could see Don
Pepe say something to Pablo but could not hear it. Pablo did not
answer; he simply shook his head again and nodded toward the
door.

‘Then I saw Don Pepe look full at the door and realized that he
had not known it was locked. Pablo showed him the key and he
stood looking at it an instant and then he turned and went and
knelt down again. I saw the priest look around at Pablo and
Pablo grinned at him and showed him the key and the priest
seemed to realize for the first time that the door was locked and
he seemed as though he started to shake his head, but he only
inclined it and went back to praying.

‘I do not know how they could not have understood the door
was locked unless it was that were so concentrated on their pray-
ing and their own thoughts; but now they certainly understood
and they understood the shouting and they must have known
now that all was changed. But they remained the same as before.

‘By now the shouting was so that you could hear nothing and
the drunkard who stood on the chair with me shook with his
hands at the bars and yelled, “Open up ! Open up 1” until he was
hoarse.

‘I watched Pablo speak to the priest again and the priest did
not answer. Then I saw Pablo unsling his shotgun and he reached
over and tapped the priest on the shoulder with it. The priest paid
no attention to him and I saw Pablo shake his head. Then he
spoke over his shoulder to Cuatro Dedos and Cuatro Dedos
spoke to the other guards and they all stood up and walked back
to the far end of the room and stood there with their shotguns.

‘I saw Pablo say something to Cuatro Dedos and he moved
over two tables and some benches and the guards stood behind

121

them with their shotguns. It made a barricade in that corner of
the room. Pabio leaned over and tapped the priest on the shoulder
again with the shotgun and the priest did not pay any attention
to him but I saw Don Pepe watching him while the others paid
no attention but went on praying. Pablo shook his head and, see-
ing Don Pepe looking at him, he shook his head at Don Pe£>e and
showed him the key, holding it up in his hand. Don Pepe under-
stood and he dropped his head and commenced to pray very fast.

‘Pablo swung his legs down from the table and walked around
it to the big chair of the Mayor on the raised platform behind the
long council table. He sat down in it and rolled himself a cigar-
ette, all the time watching the fascists who were praying with the
priest. You could not see any expression on his face at all. The
key was on the table in front of him. It was a big key of iron, over
a foot long. Then Pablo called to the guards something I could
not hear and one guard went down to the door. I could see them
all praying faster than ever and I knew that they all knew now.

‘Pablo said something to the priest but the priest did not answer.
Then Pablo leaned forward, picked up the key, and tossed it
underhand to the guard at the door. The guard caught it and
Pablo smiled at him. Then the guard put the key in the door,
turned it, and pulled the door toward him, ducking behind it as
the mob rushed in. .

‘I saw them come in and just then the drunkard on the chair
with me commenced to shout, “Ayee ! Ayee ! Ayee !” and pushed
his head forward so I could not see and then he shouted “Kill
them! Kill them! Club them! Kill them!” and he pushed me
aside with his two arms and I could see nothing.

‘I hit my elbow into his belly and I said, “Drunkard, whose
chair is this? Let me see.”

‘But he just kept shaking his hands and arms against the bars
and sSkniting, “Kill them ! Club them ! Club them ! that’s it. Club
them! Kill them; / Cabrones! jCabrones! / Cabronesl

‘I hit him hard with my elbow and said, “ Cabron / Drunkard !
Let me see.”

‘Then he put both his hands on my head to push me down and
so he might see better and leaned all his weight on my head and
went on shouting, “Club them ! that’s it. Club them!”

‘ “Club yourself,” I said, and I hit him hard where it would
hurt him and it hurt him and he dropped hi s hands from my head

122

and grabbed himself and said, “ No hay derecho , mujer. This,
woman, you have no right to do.” And in that moment, looking
through the bars, I saw the hall full of men flailing away with
clubs and striking with flails, and poking and striking and push-
ing and heaving against people with the white wooden pitchforks
that now were red and with their tines broken, and this was
going on all over the room while Pablo sat in the big chair with
his shotgun on his knees, watching, and they were shouting and
clubbing and stabbing and men were screaming as horses scream
in a fire. And I saw the priest with his skirts tucked up scrambling
over a bench and, those after him were chopping at him with the
sickles and the reaping hooks and then someone had hold of his
robe and there was another scream and another scream and I saw
two men chopping into his back with sickles while a third man
held the skirt of his robe and the priest’s arms were up and he was
clinging to the back of a chair and then the chair I was standing
on broke and the drunkard and I were on the pavement that
smelled of spilled wine and vomit and the drunkard was shaking
his finger at me and saying, “No hay derecho , mujer t no hay
derecho. You could have done me an injury,” and the people
were trampling over us to get into the hall of the Ayuntamiento
and ail I could see was legs of people going in the doorway and
the drunkard sitting there facing me and holding himself where
I had hit him.

‘That was the end of the killing of the fascists in our town and
I was glad I did not see more of it and, but for that drunkard, I
would have seen it all. So he served some good because in the
Ayuntamiento it was a thing one is sorry to have seen.

‘But the other drunkard was something rarer still. As we got
up after the breaking of the chair, and the people were still crowd-
ing into the Ayuntamiento , I saw this drunkard of the square
with his red-and-black scarf, again pouring something over Don
Aiiastasio. He was shaking his head from side to side and it was
very hard for him to sit up, but he was pouring and lighting
matches and then pouring and lighting matches and I walked
over to him and said, “What are you doing, shameless?”

‘ “ Nada t mujer } nada he said. “Let me alone.”

‘And perhaps because I was standing there so that my legs made
a shelter from the wind, the match caught and a blue flame began
to run up the shoulder of the coat of Don Anastasio and on to the

123

back o£ his neck and the drunkard put his head up and shouted
in a huge voice, “They’re burning the dead 1 They’re burning the
dead!”

* “Who?” somebody said.

* “Where?” shouted someone else.

* “Here,” bellowed the drunkard. “Exactly here !”

‘Then someone hit the drunkard a great blow alongside the
head with a flail and he fell back, and lying on the ground, he
looked up at the man who had hit him and then shut his eyes and
crossed his hands on his chest, and laid there beside Don Anas-
tasio as though he were asleep. The man did , not hit him again
and he lay there and he was still there when they picked up Don
Anastasio and put him with the others in the cart that hauled
them all over to the cliff where they were thrown over that even-
ing with the others after there had been a cleaning up in the
Ayuntamiento. It would have been better for the town if they
had thrown over twenty or thirty of the drunkards, especially
those of the red-and-black scarves, and if we ever have another
revolution I believe they should be destroyed at the start. But then
we did not know this. But in the next days we were to learn.

‘But that night we did not know what was to come. After the
slaying in the Ayuntamiento there was no more killing but we
could not have a meeting that night because there were too many
drunkards. It was impossible to obtain order and so the meeting
was postponed until the next day.

‘That night I slept with Pablo. I should not say this to you,
guapa , but on the other hand, it is good for you to know every-
thing and at least what I tell you is true. Listen to this, IngUs. It
is very curious.

‘As I say, that night we ate and it was very curious. It was as
after a storm or a flood or a battle and everyone was tired and no
one spoke much. I, myself, felt hollow and not well and I was full
of shame and a sense of wrongdoing, and I had a great feeling of
oppression and of bad to come, as this morning after the planes.
And certainly, bad came within three days.

‘Pablo, when we ate, spoke little.

‘ “Did you like it, Pilar?” he asked, finally, with his mouth full
of roast young goat. We were eating at the inn from where the
buses leave and the room was crowded and people were singing
and there was difficulty serving.

124

* “No,” I said. “Except for Don Faustino, I did not like it.”

‘ “I liked it,” he said.

* “All of it?” I asked him.

‘ “All of it,” he said and cut himself a big piece of bread with
his knife and commenced to mop up gravy with it. “All of it,
except the priest.”

4 “You didn’t like it about the priest?” because I knew he hated
priests even worse than he hated fascists.

* “He was a disillusionment to me,” Pablo said sadly.

‘So many people were singing that we had to almost shout to
hear one another.’

‘“Why?”

‘ “He died very badly,” Pablo said. “He had very little dignity.”

* “How did you want him to have dignity when he was being
chased by the mob?” I said. “I thought he had much dignity all
the time before. All the dignity that one could have.”

‘ “Yes,” Pablo said. “But in the last minute he was frightened.”

‘“Who wouldn’t be?” I said. “Did you see what they were
chasing him with?”

‘ “Why would I not see?” Pablo said. “But I find he died
badly.”

‘ “In such circumstances anyone dies badly,” I told him.
“What do you want for your money? Everything that happened
in the Ayuntamiento was scabrous.”

‘ “Yes,” said Pablo. “There was litde organization. But a priest.
He has an example to set.”

* “I thought you hated priests.”

‘ “Yes,” said Pablo and cut some more bread. “But a Spanish
priest. A Spanish priest should die very well.”

‘ “I think he died well enough,” I said. “Being deprived of all
formality.”

‘ “No,” Pablo said. “To me he was a great disillusionment.
All day I had waited for the death of the priest. I had thought he
would be the last to enter the lines. I awaited it with great antici-
pation. I expected something of a culmination. I had never seen
a priest die.”

* “There is time,” I said sarcastically. “Only to-day did the
movement start.”

‘ “No,” he said. “I am disillusioned.”

4 “Now,” I said, “I suppose you will lo$e your faith.”

125

4 “You do not understand. Pilar,” he said. “He was a Spanish
priest.”

‘ 4 ‘What people the Spaniards are,” I said to him. And what a
people they are for pride, eh, Ingles ? What a people.’

4 We must get on,’ Robert Jordan said. He looked at the sun.
‘It’s nearly noon.’

‘Yes/ Pilar said. ‘We will go now. But let me tell you about
Pablo. That night he said to me, “Pilar, to-night we will do
nothing.”

4 “Good,” I told him. “That pleases me.”

4 “I think it would be bad taste after the killing of so many
people.”

4 44 Qu6 va I told him. “What a saint you are. You think I
lived years with bullfighters not to know how they are after the
Corrida?”

4 “Is it true, Pilar?” he asked me.

4 “When did I lie to you ?” I told him.

4 “It is true, Pilar, I am a finished man this night. You do not
reproach me?”

4 “No, hombre” I said to him. “But don’t kill people every
day, Pablo.”

‘And he slept that night like a baby and I woke him in the
morning at daylight but I could not sleep that night and I got up
and sat in a chair and looked out of the window and I could see
the square in the moonlight where the lines had been and across
the square the trees shining in the moonlight, and the darkness of
their shadows, and the benches bright too in the moonlight, and
the scattered bottles shining, and beyond the edge of the cliff
where they had all been thrown. And there was no sound but the
splashing of the water in the fountain and I sat there and I
thought we have begun badly.

‘The window was open and up the square from the Fonda I
could hear a woman crying. I went out on the balcony standing
there in my bare feet on the iron and the moon shone on the faces
of all the buildings of the square and the crying was coming from
the balcony of the house of Don Guillermo. It was his wife and
she was on the balcony kneeling and crying.

‘Then I went back inside the room and I sat there and I did not
wish to think, for that was the worst day of my life until one
other day.’

126

‘What was the other?’ Maria asked.

‘Three days later when the fascists took the town.’

‘Do not tell me about it,’ said Maria. ‘I do not want to hear it.
This is enough. This was too much.’

‘I told you that you should not have listened/ Pilar said. ‘See, I
did not want you to hear it. Now you will have bad dreams.’

‘No,’ said Maria. ‘But I do not want to hear more.’

‘I wish you would tell me of it sometime,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘I will,’ Pilar said. ‘But it is bad for Maria.’

‘I don’t want to hear it,’ Maria said pitifully. ‘Please, Pilar. And
do not tell it if I am there, for I might listen in spite of myself.’

Her lips were working and Robert Jordan thought she would cry.

‘Please, Pilar, do not tell it.’

‘Do not worry, little cropped head,’ Pilar said. ‘Do not worry.
But I will tell the Ingtts sometime. 5

‘But I want to be there when he is there,’ Maria said. ‘Oh, Pilar,
do not tell it at all.’

‘I will tell it when thou art working.’

‘No. No. Please. Let us not tell it at all,’ Maria said.

‘It is only fair to tell it since I have told what we did,’ Pilar said.
‘But you shall never hear it.’

‘Are there no pleasant things to speak of?* Maria said. ‘Do we
have to talk always of horrors?’

‘This afternoon,’ Pilar said, ‘thou and the IngUs . The two of
you can speak of what you wish.’

‘Then that the afternoon should come,’ Maria said. ‘That it
should come flying.’

‘It will come,’ Pilar told her. ‘It will come flying and go the
same way and to-morrow will fly, too.’

‘This afternoon,’ Maria said. ‘This afternoon. That this after-
noon should come.’

CHAPTER II

As they came up, still deep in the shadow of the pines, after
dropping down from the high meadow into the wooded valley
and climbing up it on a trail that paralleled 'the stream and then
left it to gain, steeply, the top of a rim-rock formation, a man with
a carbine stepped out from behind a tree.

127

‘Halt/ he said. Then, ' Hola , Pilar. Who is this with thee?’

‘An lnglSs / Pilar said. ‘But with a Christian name - Roberto.
And what an obscenity of steepness it is to arrive here.*

4 Salud , CamaradaJ the guard said to Robert Jordan and put out
his hand, ‘Are you well?’

‘Yes/ said Robert Jordan. ‘And thee?’

‘Equally/ the guard .said. He was very young, with a light
build, thin, rather hawk-nosed face, high cheekbones, and grey
eyes. He wore no hat, his hair was black and shaggy and his hand-
clasp was strong and friendly. His eyes were friendly too.

‘Hello, Maria/ he said to the girl. ‘You did not tire yourself?’

‘ Que va, Joaquin/ the girl said. ‘We have sat and talked more
than we have walked/

‘Are you the dynamiter?’ Joaquin asked. ‘We have heard you
were here/

‘We passed the night at Pablo’s/ Robert Jordan said. ‘Yes, I am
the dynamiter/

‘We are glad to see you/ Joaquin said. ‘Is it for a train?’

‘Were you at the last train?’ Robert Jordan asked and smiled.

‘Was I not!’ Joaquin said. ‘That’s where we got this/ he
grinned at Maria. ‘You are pretty now,’ he said to Maria. ‘Have
they told thee how pretty?’

‘Shut up, Joaquin, and thank you very much,’ Maria said.
‘You’d be pretty with a haircut.’

‘I carried thee,’ Joaquin told the girl. ‘I carried thee over my
shoulder.’

‘As did many others/ Pilar said in the deep voice. ‘Who didn’t
carry her? Where is the old man?’

‘At the camp.’

‘Where was he last night?’

‘In Segovia/

‘Did he bring news ? ’

‘Yes,* Joaquin said, ‘there is news.’

‘Good or bad?’

‘I believe bad/

‘Did you see the planes?’

‘Ay/ said Joaquin and shook his head. ‘Don’t talk to me of that.
Comrade Dynamiter, what planes were those?’

‘Heinkel one-eleven bombers. Heinkel and Fiat pursuit/
Robert Jordan told him.

‘What were the big ones with the low wings?*

‘Heinkel one-elevens.*

‘By any names they are as bad,’ Joaquin said. ‘But I am delay-
ing you. I will take you to the commander.’

‘The commander?* Pilar asked.

Joaquin nodded seriously. ‘I like it better than “chief”,’ he said.
‘It is more military.’

‘You are militarizing heavily,’ Pilar said and laughed at him.

‘No,’ Joaquin said. ‘But I like military terms because it makes
orders clearer and for better discipline.’

‘Here is one according to thy taste, Ingles ,’ Pilar said. ‘A very
serious boy.’

‘Should I carry thee?’ Joaquin asked the girl and put his arm
on her shoulder and smiled in her face.

‘Once was enough,’ Maria told him. ‘Thank you just the same.’

‘Can you remember it?’ Joaquin asked her.

‘I can remember being carried,’ Maria said. ‘By you, no. I re-
member the gipsy because he dropped me so many times. But I
thank thee, Joaquin, and I’ll carry thee sometime.’

‘I can remember it well enough,’ Joaquin said. ‘I can remember
holding thy two legs and thy belly was on my shoulder and thy
head over my back and thy arms hanging down against my back.’

‘Thou hast much memory,’ Maria said and smiled at him. ‘I
remember nothing of that. Neither thy arms nor thy shoulders
nor thy back.’

‘Do you want to know something?* Joaquin asked her.

‘What is it?’

‘I was glad thou wert hanging over my back when the shots
were coming from behind us.’

‘What a swine,’ Maria said. ‘And was it for this the gipsy too
carried me so much ? ’

‘For that and to hold on to thy legs.’

‘My heroes,’ Maria said. ‘My saviours.’

‘Listen, guapa ,’ Pilar told her. ‘This boy carried thee much, and
in that moment thy legs said nothing to anyone. In that moment
only the bullets talked clearly. And if he would have dropped thee
he could soon have been out of range of the bullets.’

‘I have thanked him,’ Maria said. ‘And I will carry him some-
time. Allow us to joke. I do not have to cry, do I, because he car-
ried me?’

129

Td have dropped thee,’ ^aquin went on teasing her. ‘But I
was afraid Pilar would shoot me.’

*1 shoot no one,’ Pilar said.

‘ No hace falta Joaquin told her. ‘You don’t need to. You scare
them to death with your mouth.’

‘What a way to speak,’ Pilar told him. ‘And you used to be such
a polite little boy. What did you do before the movement, little
boy?’

‘Very little,’ Joaquin said. ‘I was sixteen.’

‘But what, exactly?’

‘A few pairs of shoes from time to time.’

‘Make them?’

‘No. Shine them.’

‘ Que vaj said Pilar. ‘There is more to it than that.’ She looked
at his brown face, his lithe build, his shock of hair, and the quick
heel-and-toe way that he walked. ‘Why did you fail at it?’

‘Fail at what?’

‘What? You know what. You’re growing the pigtail now.’

‘I guess it was fear,’ the boy said.

‘You’ve a nice figure,’ Pilar told him. ‘But the face isn’t much.
So it was fear, was it? You were all right at the train.’

‘I have no fear of them now,’ the boy said. ‘None. And we have
seen much worse things and more dangerous than the bulls. It is
clear no bull is as dangerous as a machine gun. But if I were in
the ring with one now I do not know if I could dominate my legs.’

‘He wanted to be a bullfighter,’ Pilar explained to Robert Jor-
dan. ‘But he was afraid.’

‘Do you like the bulls, Comrade Dynamiter?’ Joaquin grinned,
showing white teeth.

‘Very much,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Very, very much.’

‘Have you seen them in Valladolid?’ asked Joaquin.

‘Yes. In September at the Feria.’

‘That’s my town,’ Joaquin said. ‘What a fine town, but how the
buena gente , the good people of that town, have suffered in this
war.’ Then, his face grave, ‘There they shot my father. My
mother. My brother-in-law and now my sister.’

‘What barbarians,’ Robert Jordan said.

How many times had he heard this? How many times had he
watched people say it with difficulty? How many times had he
seen their eyes fill and their throats harden with the difficulty of

r 3°

saying my father, or my brother, or my mother, or my sister? He
could not remember how many times he had heard them men-
tion their dead in this way. Nearly always they spoke as this boy
did now; suddenly and apropos of the mention of the town and
always you said, ‘What barbarians.’

You only heard the statement of the loss. You did not see the
father fall as Pilar made him see the fascists die in that story she
had told by the stream. You knew the father died in some court-
yard, or against some wall, or in some field or orchard, or at night,
in the lights of a truck, beside some road. You had seen the lights
of the car from the hills and heard the shooting and afterwards
you had come down to the road and found the bodies. You did
not see the mother shot, nor the sister, nor the brother. You heard
about it; you heard the shots; and you saw the bodies.

Pilar had made him see it in that towm.

If that woman could only write. He would try to write it and
if he had luck and could remember it perhaps he could get it down
as she told it. God, how she could tell a story. She’s better than
Quevedo, he thought. He never wrote the death of any Don
Faustino as well as she told it. I wish I could write well enough
to write that story, he thought. What we did. Not what the others
did to us. He knew enough about that. He knew plenty about
that behind the lines. But you had to have known the people
before. You had to know what they had been in the village.

Because of our mobility and because we did not have to stay
afterwards to take the punishment we never knew how anything
really ended, he thought. You stayed with a peasant and his
family. You came at night and ate with them. In the day you were
hidden arid the next night you were gone. You did your job and
cleared out. The next time you came that way you heard that they
had been shot. It was as simple as that.

But you were always gone when it happened. The parttzans
did their damage and pulled out. The peasants stayed and took
the punishment. I’ve always known about the other, he thought.
What we did to them at the start. I’ve always known it and hated
it and I have heard it mentioned shamelessly and shamefully,
bragged of, boasted of, defended, explained, and denied. But that
damned woman made me see it as though I had been there.

Well, he thought, it is part of one’s education. It will be quite
an education when it’s finished. You learn in this war if you listen.

You most certainly did. He was lucky that he had lived parts of
ten years in Spain before the war. They trusted you on the lan-
guage, principally. They trusted you on understanding the lan-
guage completely and speaking it idiomatically and having a
knowledge of the different places. A Spaniard was only really
loyal to his village in the end. First Spain of course, then his own
tribe, then his province, then his village, his family, and finally
his trade. If you knew Spanish he was prejudiced in your favour,
if you knew his province it was that much better, but if you knew
his village and his trade you were in as far as any foreigner ever
could be. He never felt like a foreigner in Spain and they did
not really treat him like a foreigner most of the time; only when
they turned on you.

Of course they turned on you. They turned on you often but
they always turned on everyone. They turned on themselves, too,
if you had three together, two would unite against you, and then
the two would start to betray each other. Not always, but often
enough for you to take enough cases and start to draw it as a
conclusion.

This was no way to think; but who censored his thinking?
Nobody but himself. He would not think himself into any defeat-
ism. The first thing was to win the war. If we did not win the war
everything was lost. But he noticed, and listened to, and remem-
bered everything. He was serving in a war and he gave absolute
loyalty and as complete performance as he could give while he
was serving. But nobody owned his mind, nor his faculties for
seeing and hearing, and if he were going to form judgements he
would form them afterwards. And there would be plenty of
material to draw them from. There was plenty already. There
was a little too much sometimes.

Look at the Pilar woman, he thought. No matter what comes,
if there is time, I must make her tell me the rest of that story. Look
at her walking along with those two kids. You could not get three
better-looking products of Spain than those. She is like a moun-
tain and the boy and the girl are like young trees. The old trees
are all cut down and the young trees are growing clean like that.
In spite of what has happened to the two of them they look as
fresh and clean and new and untouched as though they had never
heard of misfortune. But according to Pilar, Maria has just gotten
sound again. She must have been in an awful shape.

132

He remembered a Belgian boy in the Eleventh Brigade who
had enlisted with five other boys from his village. It was a village
of about two hundred people and the boy had never been away
from the village before. When he first saw thp boy out, at Hans*
Brigade Staff, the other five from the village had all been killed
and the boy was in very bad shape and they were using him as an
orderly to wait on table at the staff. He had a big, blond, ruddy
Flemish face and huge awkward peasant hands and he moved,
with the dishes, as powerfully and awkwardly as a draught-horse.
But he cried all the time. All during the meal he cried with no
noise at all.

You looked up and there he was, crying. If you asked for the
wine, he cried and if you passed your plate for stew, he cried;
turning away his head. Then he would stop; but if you looked
up at him, tears would start coming again. Between courses
he cried in the kitchen. Everyone was very gentle with him.
But it did no good. He would have to find out what became of
him and whether he ever cleared up and was fit for soldiering
again.

Maria was sound enough now. She seemed so anyway. But he
was no psychiatrist. Pilar was the psychiatrist. It probably had
been good for them to have been together last night. Yes, unless
it stopped. It certainly had been good for him. He felt fine to-day;
sound and good and unworried and happy. The show looked bad
enough but he was awfully lucky, too. He had been in others that
announced themselves badly. Announced themselves; that was
thinking in Spanish. Maria was lovely.

Look at her, he said to himself. Look at her.

He looked at her striding happily in the sun; her khaki shirt
open at the neck. She walks like a colt moves, he thought. You do
not run on to something like that. Such things don’t happen.
Maybe it never did happen, he thought. Maybe you dreamed it or
made it up and it never did happen. Maybe it is like the dreams
you have when someone you have seen in the cinema comes to
your bed at night and is so kind and lovely. He’d slept with them
all that way when he was asleep in bed. He could remember
Garbo still, and Harlow. Yes, Harlow many times. Maybe it was
like those dreams.

But he could still remember the time Garbo came to his bed the
night before the attack at Pozoblanco and she was wearing a soft

133

silky wool sweater when he put his arm around her and when she
leaned forward her hair swept forward and over his face and she
said why had he never told her that he loved her when she had
loved him all this time? She was not shy, nor cold, nor distant.
She was just lovely to hold and kind and lovely and like the old
days with Jack Gilbert and it was as true as though it happened
and he loved her much more than Harlow though Garbo was
only there once while Harlow - maybe this was like those
dreams.

Maybe it isn’t too, he said to himself. Maybe I could reach over
and touch that Maria now, he said to himself. Maybe you are
afraid to, he said to himself. Maybe you would find out that it
never happened and it was not true and it was something you
made up like those dreams about the people of the cinema or how
all your old girls come back and sleep in that robe at night on all
the bare floors, in the straw of the haybarns, the stables, the
corrales and cortijos, the woods, the garages, the trucks, and all
the hills of Spain. They all came to that robe when he was asleep
and they were all much nicer than they ever had been in life.
Maybe it was like that: Maybe you would be afraid to touch her
to see if it was true. Maybe you would, and probably it is some-
thing that you made up or that you dreamed.

He took a step across the trail and put his hand on the girl’s
arm. Under his fingers he felt the smoothness of her arm in the
worn khaki. She looked at him and smiled.

‘Hello, Maria,’ he said.

‘Hello, Ingles’ she answered and he saw her tawny brown face
and the yellow-grey eyes and the full lips smiling and the cropped
sunburned hair and she lifted her face at him and smiled in his
eyes. It was true all right.

Now they were in sight of El Sordo’s camp in the last of the
pines, where there was a rounded gulch-head shaped like an up-
turned basin. All these limestone upper basins must be full of
caves, he thought. There are two caves there ahead. The scrub
pines growing in the rock hide them well. This is as good or a
better place than Pablo’s.

‘How was this shooting of thy family?’ Pilar was saying to
Joaquin.

‘Nothing, woman,’ Joaquin said. ‘They were of the left as
many others in Valladolid. When the fascists purified the town

T 34

they shot first the father. He had voted Socialist. Then they shot
the mother. She had voted the same. It was the first time she had
ever voted. After that they shot the husband of one of the sisters.
He was a member of the syndicate of tramway drivers. Clearly he
could not drive a tram without belonging to the syndicate. But he
was without politics. I knew him well. He was even a little bit
shameless. I do not think he was even a good comrade. Then the
husband of the other girl, the other sister, who was also in the
trams, had gone to the hills as I had. They thought she knew
where he was. But she did not. So they shot her because she would
not tell them where he was.’

‘What barbarians,’ said Pilar. ‘Where is El Sordo? I do not see
him.’

‘He is here. He is probably inside,’ answered Joaqum and stop-
ping now, and resting the rifle butt on the ground, said, ‘Pilar,
listen to me. And thou, Maria. Forgive me if I have molested you
speaking of things of the family. I know that all have the same
troubles and it is more valuable not to speak of them.’

‘That you should speak,’ Pilar said. ‘For what are we born if
not to aid one another ? And to listen and say nothing is a cold
enough aid.’

‘But it can molest the Maria. She has too many things of her
own.’

* Que vaj Maria said. ‘Mine are such a big bucket that yours'
falling in will never fill it. I am sorry, Joaqufn, and I hope thy
sister is well.’

‘So far she’s all right,’ Joaquin said. ‘They have her in prison
and it seems they do not mistreat her much.’

‘Are there others in the family?’ Robert Jordan asked.

‘No,’ the boy said. ‘Me. Nothing more. Except the brother-in-
law who went to the hills and I think he is dead.’

‘Maybe he is all right,’ Maria said. ‘Maybe he is with a band in
other mountains.’

‘For me he is dead,’ Joaqum said. ‘He was never too good at
getting about and he was conductor of a tram and that is not the
best preparation for the hills. I doubt if he could last a year. He
was somewhat weak in the chest too.’

‘But he may be all right,’ Maria put her arm on his’shoulder.

‘Certainly, girl. Why not? ’ said Joaqum.

As the boy stood there, Maria reached up, put her arms around
135

his neck, and kissed him. Joaquin turned his head away because
he was crying.

‘That is as a brother/ Maria said to him. ‘I kiss thee as a
brother.* „

The boy shook his head, crying without making any noise.

‘I am thy sister,’ Maria said. ‘And I love thee and thou hast a
family. We are all thy family.’

‘Including the Ingles boomed Pilar. ‘Isn’t it true, Ingles ?’

‘Yes,* Robert Jordan said to the boy. ‘We are all thy family,
Joaquin.*

‘He’s your brother,’ Pilar said. ‘Hey, IngUs ? ’

Robert Jordan put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. ‘We are
all brothers,’ he said. The boy shook his head.

‘I am ashamed to have spoken,’ he said. ‘To speak of such
things makes it more difficult for all. I am ashamed of molesting
you.’

‘I obscenity in the milk of thy shame,’ Pilar said in her deep
lovely voice. ‘And if the Maria kisses thee again I will commence
kissing thee myself. It’s years since I’ve kissed a bullfighter, even
an unsuccessful one like thee. I would like to kiss an unsuccessful
bullfighter turned Communist. Hold him, IngUs , till I get a good
kiss at him.’

‘ Deja ,* the boy said and turned away sharply. ‘Leave me alone.
I am all right, and I am ashamed.’

He stood there, getting his face under control. Maria put her
hand in Robert Jordan’s. Pilar stood with her hands on her hips
looking at the boy mockingly now.

‘When I kiss thee,’ she said to him, ‘it will not be as any sister.
This trick of kissing as a sister.’

‘It is not necessary to joke,’ the boy said. ‘I told you I am all
right, I am sorry that I spoke.’

‘Well then, let us go and see the old man,’ Pilar said. ‘I tire my-
self with such emotion.’

The boy looked at her. From his eyes you could see he was sud-
denly very hurt.

‘Not thy emotion,’ Pilar said to him. ‘Mine. What a tender
thing thou art for a bullfighter.*

‘I was a failure,* Joaquin said. ‘You don’t have to keep insisting
on it.*

‘But you are growing the pigtail another time.*

136

‘Yes, and why not? Fighting stock serves best for that purpose
economically. It gives employment to many and the State will
control it. And perhaps now I would not be afraid.’

‘Perhaps not,’ Pilar said. ‘Perhaps not.’

‘Why do you speak in such a brutal manner, Pilar r’ Maria said
to her. ‘I love thee very much but thou art acting very barbarous.’

‘It is possible that I am barbarous,’ Pilar said. ‘Listen, IngUs.
Do you know what you are going to say to El Sordo ? ’

‘Yes.’

‘Because he is a man of few words unlike me and thee and this
sentimental menagerie.’

‘Why do you talk thus?’ Maria asked again, angrily.

‘I don’t know,’ said Pilar as she strode along. ‘Why do you
think?’

‘I do not know.’

‘At times many things tire me,’ Pilar said angrily. ‘You under-
stand? And one of them is to have forty-eight years. You hear
me? Forty-eight years and an ugly face. And another is to see
panic in the face of a failed bullfighter of Communist tendencies
when I say, as a joke, I might kiss him.’

‘It’s not true, Pilar,’ the boy said. ‘You did not see that.*

‘Que va , it’s not true. And I obscenity in the milk of all of you.
Ah, there he is. Hola, Santiago ! jQue tal ?*

The man to whom Pilar spoke was short and heavy, brown-
faced, with broad cheekbones; grey-haired, with wide-set yellow-
brown eyes, a thin-bridged, hooked nose like an Indian’s, a long
upper lip, and a wide, thin mouth. He was clean shaven and he
walked toward them from the mouth of the cave, moving with the
bow-legged walk that went with his cattle herdsman’s breeches
and boots. The day was warm but he had on a sheep’s wool-lined
short leather jacket buttoned up to the heck. He put out a big
brown hand to Pilar. ‘ Hola , woman,’ he said. ‘Hola , 3 he said to
Robert Jordan and shook his hand and looked him keenly in the
face. Robert Jordan saw his eyes were yellow as a cat’s and flat as
a reptile’s eyes are. ‘ Guapa he said to Maria and patted her
shoulder.

‘Eaten?’ he asked Pilar. She shook her head.

‘Eat,” he said and looked at Robert Jordan, ‘Drink?’ he asked,
making a motion with his hand decanting his thumb downward.

‘Yes, thanks.’

137

‘Good,’ El Sordo said. ‘Whisky P *

‘You have whisky?’

El Sordo nodded. e Ingles ? 9 he asked. ‘Not

‘ Americano. *

‘Few Americans here,’ he said.

‘Now more.’

‘Less bad. North or South?’

‘North.’

‘Same as Ingles. When blow bridge?*

‘You know about the bridge?’

El Sordo nodded.

‘Day after to-morrow morning.’

‘Good,’ said El Sordo.

‘Pablo?’ he asked Pilar.

She shook her head. El Sordo grinned.

‘Go away,’ he said to Maria and grinned again. ‘Come back,’
he looked at a large watch he pulled out on a leather thong from
inside his coat. ‘Half an hour.’

He motioned to them to sit down on a flattened log that served
as a bench and looking at Joaquin, jerked his thumb down the
trail in the direction they had. come from.

‘I’ll walk down with Joaquin and come back,’ Maria said.

El Sordo went into the cave and came out with a pinch bottle
of Scotch whisky and three glasses. The bottle was under one
arm, the three glasses were in the hand of that arm, a finger in
each glass, and his other hand was around the neck of an earthen-
ware jar of water. He put the glasses and the bottle down on the
log and set the jug on the ground.

‘No ice,’ he said to Robert Jordan and handed him the bottle.

‘I don’t want any,’ Pilar said and covered her glass with her
hand.

‘Ice last night on ground,* El Sordo said and grinned. ‘All melt.
Ice up there,’ El Sordo said and pointed to the snow that showed
on the bare crest of the mountains. ‘Too far.’

Robert Jordan started to pour into El Sordo’s glass but the deaf
man shook his head and made a motion for the other to pour for
himself.

Robert Jordan poured a big drink of whisky into the glass and
El Sordo watched him eagerly and when he had finished, handed
him the water jug and Robert Jordan filled the glass with the cold

138

water that ran in a stream from the earthenware spout as he
tipped up the jug.

El Sordo poured himself half a glassful and filled the glass with
water.

‘Wine?’ he asked Pilar.

‘No. Water.’

‘Take it,’ he said. ‘No good/ he said to Robert Jordan and
grinned. ‘Knew many English. Always much whisky/

‘Where?’

‘Ranch/ El Sordo said. ‘Friends of boss.’

‘Where do you get the whisky?’

‘What? ’ he could not hear.

‘You have to shout/ Pilar said. ‘Into the other ear/

El Sordo pointed to his better ear and grinned.

‘Where do you get the whisky?’ Robert Jordan shouted.

‘Make it/ El Sordo said and watched Robert Jordan’s hand
check on its way to his mouth with the glass.

‘No/ El Sordo said and patted his shoulder. ‘Joke. Comes from
La Granja. Heard last night’ comes English dynamiter. Good.
Very happy. Get whisky. For you. You like?’

‘Very much/ said Robert Jordan. ‘It’s very good whisky/

‘Am contented/ Sordo grinned. *Was bringing to-night with
information/

‘What information?’

‘Much troop movement/

‘Where?’

‘Segovia. Planes you saw?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bad, eh?’

‘Bad/

‘Troop movement?’

‘Much between Villacastin and Segovia. On Valladolid road.
Much between Villacastin and San Rafael. Much. Much/

‘What do you think?’

‘We prepare something?’

‘Possibly.’

‘They know. Prepare too.*

‘It is possible.’

‘Why not blow bridge to-night?’

‘Orders/

139

‘Whose orders ?’

‘General Staff.’

‘So.’

‘Is the time of the blowing important?’ Pilar asked.

‘Of all importance.’

‘But if they are moving up troops?’

‘I will send Anselmo with a report of all movement and con-
centrations. He is watching the road.’

‘You have someone at road ? ’ Sordo asked.

Robert Jordan did not know how much he had heard. You
never know with a deaf man. #

‘Yes/ he said.

‘Me, too. Why not blow bridge now?’

‘I have my orders.’

C I don’t like it/ El Sordo said. ‘This I do not like.’

‘Nor 1/ said Robert Jordan.

El Sordo shook his head and took a sip of the whisky. ‘You
want of me?’

‘How many men have you?’

‘Eight.’

‘To cut the telephone, attack the post at the house of the road-
menders, take it, and fall back on the bridge.’

‘It is easy.’

‘It will all be written out/

‘Don’t trouble. And Pablo?’

‘Will cut the telephone below, attack the post at the sawmill,
take it, and fall back on the bridge.’

‘And afterwards for the retreat?’ Pilar asked. ‘We are seven
men, two women, and five horses. You are?’ she shouted into
Sordo ’s ear.

‘Eight men and four horses. Faltan cab alio s' he said. ‘Lacks
horses.’

‘Seventeen people and nine horses,’ Pilar said. ‘Without ac-
counting for transport.*

Sordo said nothing.

‘There is no way of getting horses?’ Robert Jordan said into
Sordo’s best ear.

‘In war a year/ Sordo said. ‘Have four.’ He showed four
fingers. ‘Now you want eight for to-morrow.’

‘Yes/ said Robert Jordan. ‘Knowing you are leaving. Having
140

no need to be careful as you have been in this neighbourhood. Not
having to be cautious here now. You could not cut out and steal
eight head of horses? ’

‘Maybe,’ Sordo said. ‘Maybe none. Maybe more.’

‘You have an automatic rifle ? 9 Robert Jordan asked.

Sordo nodded.

‘Where ? 9
‘Up the hill . 9
‘What kind ? 9

‘Don’t know name. With pans . 9
‘How many rounds ? 9
‘Five pans . 9

‘Does anyone know how to use it?’

‘Me. A little. Not shoot too much. Not want make noise here.
Not want use cartridges . 9

‘I will look at it afterwards , 9 Robert Jordan said. ‘Have you
hand grenades ? 9
‘Plenty . 9

‘How many rounds per rifle ? 9
‘Plenty.’

‘How many ? 9

‘One hundred fifty. More maybe . 9
‘What about other people ? 9
‘For what ? 9

‘To have sufficient force to take the posts and cover the bridge
while I am blowing it. We should have double what we have . 9
‘Take posts don’t worry. What time day ? 9
‘Daylight . 9
‘Don’t worry . 9

‘I could use twenty more men, to be sure , 9 Robert Jordan said.

‘Good ones do not exist. You want undependables ? 9

‘No. How many good ones ? 9

‘Maybe four . 9

‘Why so few ? 9

‘No trust . 9

‘For horseholders ? 9

‘Must trust much to be horseholders . 9

T 9 d like ten more good men if I could get them . 9

‘Four . 9

‘Anselmo told me there were over a hundred in these hills . 9

‘No good/

‘You said thirty/ Robert Jordan said to Pilar. ‘Thirty of a cer-
tain degree of dependability/

‘What about the people of Elias?’ Pilar shouted to Sordo. He
shook his head.

‘No good/

‘You can’t get ten?’ Robert Jordan asked. Sordo looked at him
with his Eat, yellow eyes and shook his head.

‘Four/ he said and held up four fingers,

‘Yours are good?’ Robert Jordan asked, regretting it as he
said it.

Sordo nodded.

‘ Dentro de la grave dad' he said in Spanish. ‘Within the limits
of the danger/ He grinned. ‘Will be bad, eh?’

‘Possibly/

‘It is the same to me,’ Sordo said simply and not boasting.
‘Better four good than much bad. In this war always much bad,
very little good. Every day fewer good. And Pablo ? ’ he looked at
Pilar.

‘As you know,’ Pilar said. ‘Worse every day/

Sordo shrugged his shoulders.

‘Take drink/ Sordo said to Robert Jordan. ‘I bring mine and
four more. Makes twelve. To-night we discuss all. I have sixty
sticks dynamite. You want?’

‘What per cent?’

‘Don’t know. Common dynamite. I bring.’

‘We’ll blow the small bridge above with that,’ Robert Jordan
said. ‘That is fine. You’ll come down to-night? Bring that, will
you? I’ve no orders for that but it should be blown/

‘I come to-night. Then hunt horses.’

‘What chance for horses ?’

‘Maybe. Now eat/

Does he talk that way to everyone? Robert Jordan thought. Or
is that his idea of how to make foreigners understand?

‘And where are we going to go when this is done?’ Pilar
shouted into Sordo’s ear.

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘All that must be arranged/ the woman said.

‘Of course/ said Sordo. ‘Why not?’

‘It is bad enough/ Pilar said. ‘It must be planned very well.’

142

‘Yes, woman/ Sordo said. ‘What has thee worried?’

‘Everything,’ Pilar shouted.

Sordo grinned at her.

‘You’ve been going about with Pablo/ he said.

So he does only speak that pidgin Spanish for foreigners, Robert
Jordan thought. Good. I’m glad to hear him talking straight

‘Where do you think we should go?’ Pilar asked.

‘Where?’

‘Yes, where/

‘There are many places/ Sordo said. ‘Many places. You know
Gredos?’

‘There are many people there. All these places will be cleaned
up as soon as they have time.’

‘Yes. But it is a big country and very wild.’

‘It would be very difficult to get there/ Pilar said.

‘Everything is difficult/ El Sordo said. ‘We can get to Gredos
as well as to anywhere else. Travelling at night. Here it is very
dangerous now. It is a miracle we have been here this long.
Gredos is safer country than this.’

‘Do you know where I want to go?’ Pilar asked him.

‘Where? The Paramera? That’s no good.’

‘No/ Pilar said. ‘Not the Sierra de Paramera. I want to go to
the Republic.’

‘That is possible.’

‘Would your people go?*

‘Yes. If I say to.’

‘Of mine, I do not know,’ Pilar said. ‘Pablo would not want to
although, truly, he might feel safer there. He is too old to have
to go for a soldier unless they call more classes. The gipsy will not
wish to go. I do not know about the others.’

‘Because nothing passes here for so long they do not realize the
danger,’ El Sordo said.

‘Since the planes to-day they will see it more/ Robert Jordan
said. ‘But I should think you could operate very well from the
Gredos.*

‘What? ’ El Sordo said and looked at him with his eyes very flat.
There was no friendliness in the way he asked the question.

‘You could raid more effectively from there/ Robert Jordan
said.

‘So/ El Sordo said. ‘You know Gredos?*

143

‘Yes. You could operate against the main line o£ the railway
from there. You could keep cutting it as we are doing farther
south in Estremadura. To operate from there would be better
than returning to the Republic/ Robert Jordan said, ‘You are
more useful there.’

They had both gotten sullen as he talked.

Sordo looked at Pilar and she looked back at him.

‘You know Gredos?’ Sordo asked. ‘Truly?’

‘Sure/ said Robert Jordan.

‘Where would you go?’

‘Above Barco de Avila. Better places than here. Raid against
the main road and the railroad between Be jar and Plasencia.’

‘Very difficult/ Sordo said.

‘We have worked against that same railroad in much more
dangerous country in Estremadura/ Robert Jordan said.

‘Who is we?’

‘The guerrilleros group of Estremadura.’

‘You are many?**

‘About forty/

‘Was the one with the bad nerves and the strange name from
there?’ asked Pilar.

‘Yes.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Dead, as I told you.’

‘You are from there, too?’

‘Yes.’

‘You see what I mean?’ Pilar said to him.

And I have made a mistake, Robert Jordan thought to himself.
I have told Spaniards we can do something better than they can
when the rule is never to speak of your own exploits or abilities.
When I should have flattered them I have told them what I think
they should do and now they are furious. Well, they will either
get over it or they will not. They are certainly much more useful
in the Gredos than here. The proof is that here they have done
nothing since that train that Kashkin organized. It was not much
of a show. It cost the fascists one engine and killed a few troops
but they all talk as though it were the high point of the war.
Maybe they will shame into going to the Gredos. Yes and maybe
I will get thrown out of here too. Well, it is not a very rosy-look-
ing dish any way that you look into it.

144

‘Listen, Ingles,’ Pilar said to him- ‘How are your nerves?*

‘All right,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘O.K.*

‘Because the last dynamiter they sent to work with us, although
a formidable technician, was very nervous/

‘We have nervous ones,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘I do not say that he was a coward, because he comported him-
self very well/ Pilar went on. ‘But he spoke in a very rare and
windy way/ She raised her voice. ‘Isn’t it true, Santiago, that the
last dynamiter, he of the train, was a litde rare?’

* Algo raro / the deaf man nodded and his eyes went over Robert
Jordan’s face in a way that reminded him of the round opening at
the end of the wand of a vacuum cleaner. \Si, algo raro , pero
bueno /

‘ Murid, Robert Jordan said into the deaf man’s ear. ‘He is
dead/

‘How was that?’ the deaf man asked, dropping his eyes down
from Robert Jordan’s eyes to his lips.

‘I shot him,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘He was too badly wounded to
travel and I shot him/

‘He was always talking of such a necessity/ Pilar said. ‘It was
his obsession/

‘Yes/ said Robert Jordan. ‘He was always talking of such a
necessity and it was his obsession.’

* jComa fue ?’ the deaf man asked. ‘Was it a train?’

‘It was returning from a train/ Robert Jordan said. ‘The train
was successful. Returning in the dark we encountered a fascist
patrol and as we ran he was shot high in the back but without
hitting any bone except the shoulder blade. He travelled quite a
long way, but with the wound was unable to travel more. He was
unwilling to be left behind and I shot him.’

‘ Menos mal / said El Sordo. ‘Less bad/

‘Are you sure your nerves are all right?’ Pilar said to Robert
Jordan.

‘Yes/ he told her. ‘I am sure that my nerves are all right and I
think that when we terminate this of the bridge you would do
well to go to the Gredos/

As he said that, the woman started to curse in a flood of ob-
scene invective that rolled over and around him like the hot white
water splashing down from the sudden eruption of a geyser.

The deaf man shook his head at Robert Jordan, and grinned in

M5

delight. He continued to shake his head happily as Pilar went on
vilifying and Robert Jordan knew that it was all right again now.
Finally she stopped cursing, reached for the water jug, tipped it
up, and took a drink and said, calmly, ‘Then just shut up about
what we are to do afterwards, will you, Ingles ? You go back to
the Republic and you take your piece with you and leave us others
alone here to decide what part of these hills we’ll die in.’

‘Live in,’ El Sordo said. ‘Calm thyself, Pilar.’

‘Live in and die in,’ Pilar said. ‘I can see the end of it well
enough. I like thee, Ingles , but keep thy mouth off what we
must do when thy business is finished.’

‘It is thy business,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘I do not put my
hand in it.*

‘But you did,’ Pilar said. ‘Take thy little cropped-headed
whore and go back to the Republic but do not shut the door on
others who are not foreigners and who loved the Republic when
thou wert wiping thy mother’s milk off thy chin.’

Maria had come up the trail while they were talking and she
heard this last sentence which Pilar, raising her voice again,
shouted at Robert Jordan. Maria shook her head at Robert Jordan
violendy and shook her finger warningly. Pilar saw Robert Jor-
dan looking at the girl and saw him smile and she turned and
said, ‘Yes. I said whore and I mean it. And I suppose that you’ll
go to Valencia together and we can eat goat crut in Gredos.’

‘I’m a whore if thee wishes, Pilar,’ Maria said. ‘I suppose I
am in all case if you say so. But calm thyself. What passes with
thee?’

‘Nothing,’ Pilar said and sat down on the bench, her voice
calm now and all the metallic rage gone out of it. ‘I do not call
thee that. But I have such a desire to go to the Republic.’

‘We can all go,’ Maria said.

‘Why not?’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Since thou seemest not to love
the Gredos.’

Sordo grinned at him.

‘We’ll see,’ Pilar said, her rage gone now. ‘Give me a glass of
that rare drink. I have worn my throat out with anger. We’ll see.
We’ll see what happens.’

‘You see, comrade,’ El Sordo explained. ‘It is the morning that
is difficult.’ He was not talking the pidgin Spanish now and he
was looking into Robert Jordan’s eyes calmly and explainingly;

146

not searchingly nor suspiciously, nor with the flat superiority o£
the old campaigner that had been In them before. ‘I understand
your needs and I know the posts must be exterminated and the
bridge covered while you do your work. This I understand per-
fectly. This is easy to do before daylight or at daylight.’

‘Yes,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Run along a minute, will you?’ he
said to Maria without looking at her.

The girl walked away out of hearing and sat down, her hands
clasped over her ankles.

‘You see,’ Sordo said. ‘In that there is no problem. But to leave
afterward and get out of this country in daylight presents a grave
problem.’

‘Clearly,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘I have thought of it. It is day-
light for me also.’

‘But you are one,’ El Sordo said. ‘We are various.’

‘There is the possibility of returning to the camps and leaving
from there at dark,’ Pilar said, putting the glass to her lips and
then lowering it.

‘That is very dangerous, too,’ El Sordo explained. ‘That is per-
haps even more dangerous.’

‘I can see how it would be,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘To do the bridge in the night would be easy,’ El Sordo said.
‘Since you make the condition that it must be done at daylight, it
brings grave consequences.’

‘I know it.’

‘You could not do it at night? ’

‘I would be shot for it.’

‘It is very possible we will all be shot for it if you do it in the
daytime.’

‘For me myself that is less important once the bridge is blown,’
Robert Jordan said. ‘But I see your viewpoint. You cannot work
out a retreat for daylight?’

‘Certainly,’ El Sordo said. ‘We will work out such a retreat.
But I explain to you why one is preoccupied and why one is irri-
tated. You speak of going to Gredos as though it were a military
manoeuvre to be accomplished. To arrive at Gredos would be a
miracle.’

Robert Jordan said nothing.

‘Listen to me,’ the, deaf man said. ‘I am speaking much. But it
is so we may understand one another. We exist here by a miracle.

147

By a miracle of laziness and stupidity of the fascists which they
will remedy in time. Of course we are very careful and we make
no disturbance in these hills.*

‘I know.’

‘But now, with this, we must go. We must think much about
the manner of our going.’

‘Clearly.’

‘Then,’ said El Sordo. ‘Let us eat now, I have talked much.’

‘Never have I heard thee talk so much,’ Pilar said. ‘Is it this?’
she held up the glass.

‘No,’ El Sordo shook his head. ‘It isn’t whisky. It is that never
have I had so much to talk of.’

‘I appreciate your aid and your loyalty,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘I
appreciate the difficulty caused by the timing of the blowing of
the bridge.*

‘Don’t talk of that,’ El Sordo said. ‘We are here to do what we
can do. But this is complicated.’

‘And on paper very simple,’ Robert Jordan grinned. ‘On paper
the bridge is blown at the moment the attack starts in order that
nothing shall come up the road. It is very simple.’

‘That they should let us do something on paper,’ El Sordo said.
‘That we should conceive and execute something on paper.’

* “Paper bleeds litde,” ’ Robert Jordan quoted the proverb.

‘But it is very useful,’ Pilar said. ‘ “Es muy util” What I would
like to do is use thy orders for that purpose.’

‘Me too,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘But you could never win a war
like that.’

‘No,’ the big woman said. ‘I suppose not. But do you know
what I would like ? ’

‘To go to the Republic,’ El Sordo said. He had put his good ear
close to her as she spoke. ‘Ya ir&s, mujer . Let us win this and it
will all be Republic.’

‘Ail right,’ Pilar said. ‘And now, for God’s sake let us eat.’

148

CHAPTER 12

They left El Sordo’s after eating and started down the trail. El
Sordo had walked with them as far as the lower post.

* Salud ,’ he said. ‘Until to-night.’

‘Salad, Camarada ,’ Robert Jordan had said to him and the three
of them had gone on down the trail, the deaf man standing look-
ing after them. Maria had turned and waved her hand at him and
El Sordo waved disparagingly with the abrupt, Spanish upward
flick of the forearm as though something were being tossed away
which seems the negation of all salutation which has not to do
with business. Through the meal he had never unbuttoned his
sheepskin coat and he had been carefully polite, careful to turn
his head to hear, and had returned to speaking his broken Span-
ish, asking Robert Jordan about conditions in the Republic
politely; but it was obvious he wanted to be rid of them.

As they had left him. Pilar had said to him, ‘Well, Santiago?’

‘Well, nothing, woman,’ the deaf man said. ‘It is all right. But
I am thinking.’

‘Me, too,’ Pilar had said and now as they walked down the trail,
the walking easy and pleasant down the steep trail through the
pines that they had toiled up, Pilar said nothing. Neither Robert
Jordan nor Maria spoke and the three of them travelled along
fast until the trail rose steeply out of the wooded valley to come
up through the timber, leave it, and come out into the high
meadow.

It was hot in the late May afternoon and half way up this last
steep grade the woman stopped. Robert Jordan, stopping and
looking back, saw the sweat beading on her forehead. He thought
her brown face looked pallid and the skin sallow and that there
were dark areas under her eyes.

‘Let us rest a minute,’ he said. ‘We go too fast.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Let us go on.’

‘Rest, Pilar,’ Maria $aid. ‘You look badly.’

‘Shut up,’ the woman said. ‘Nobody asked for thy advice.’

149

She started on up the trail but at the top she was breathing
heavily and her face was wet with perspiration and there was no
doubt about her pallor now.

‘Sit down, Pilar/ Maria said. ‘Please, please sit down/

‘All right/ said Pilar, and the three of them sat down under a
pine tree and looked across the mountain meadow to where the
tops of the peaks seemed to jut out from the roll of the high coun-
try with snow shining bright on them now in the early after-
noon sun.

‘What rotten stuff is the snow and how beaudful it looks/ Pilar
said. ‘What an illusion is the snow.’ She turned to Maria. ‘I am
sorry I was rude to thee, guapa. I don’t know what has held me
to-day. I have an evil temper.’

‘I never mind what you say when you are angry/ Maria told
her. ‘And you are angry often/

‘Nay, it is worse than anger/ Pilar said, looking across at the
peaks.

‘Thou art not well/ Maria said.

‘Neither is it that/ the woman said. ‘Come here, guapa , and put
thy head in my lap/

Maria moved close to her, put her arms out and folded them
as one does who goes to sleep without a pillow, and lay with her
head on her arms. She turned her face up to Pilar and smiled at
her but the big woman looked on across the meadow at the
mountains. She stroked the girl’s head without looking down at
her and ran a blunt finger across the girl’s forehead and then
around the line of her ear and down the line where the hair grew
on her neck.

‘You can have her in a little while, Ingles / she said. Robert
Jordan was sitting behind her.

‘Do not talk like that/ Maria said.

‘Yes, he can have thee/ Pilar said and looked at neither of them.
‘I have never wanted thee. But I am jealous/

‘Pilar/ Maria said. ‘Do not talk thus/

‘He can have thee/ Pilar said, and ran her finger around the
lobe of the girl’s ear. ‘But I am very jealous/

‘But Pilar/ Maria said. ‘It was thee explained to me there was
nothing like that between us/

‘There is always something like that/ the woman said. ‘There
is always something like something that there should not be. But

150

with me there is not. Truly there is not. I want thy happiness and
nothing more.*

Maria said nothing but lay there, trying to make her head rest
lightly.

‘Listen, guapa / said Pilar and ran her finger now absently but
tracingly over the contours o£ her cheeks. ‘Listen, guapa , I love
thee and he can have thee, I am no tortillera but a woman made
for men. That is true. But now it gives me pleasure to say thus, in
the day-time, that I care for thee.'

‘I love thee, too.’

*Que va. Do not talk nonsense. Thou dost not know even of
what I speak/

‘I know/

c QuS va, that you know. You are for the Ingles. That is seen
and as it should be. That I would have. Anything else I would
not have. I do not make perversions. I only tell you something
true. Few people will ever talk to thee truly and no women. I am
jealoufe and say it and it is there. And I say it/

‘Do not say it/ Maria said. ‘Do not say it, Pilar/

l Por que , do not say it/ the woman said, still not looking at
either of them. ‘I will say it until it no longer pleases me to say it.
And/ she looked down at the girl now, ‘that time has come
already. I do not say it more, you understand? ’

‘Pilar/ Maria said. ‘Do not talk thus/

‘Thou art a very pleasant litde rabbit/ Pilar said. ‘And lift thy
head now because this silliness is over/

‘It was not silly/ said Maria. ‘And my head is well where it is/

‘Nay. Lift it/ Pilar told her and put her big hands under the
girl’s head and raised it. ‘And thou, InglisP she said, still holding
the girl’s head as she looked across the mountains. ‘What cat has
eaten thy tongue?’

‘No cat/ Robert Jordan said.

‘What animal then?’ She laid the girl’s head down on the
ground.

‘No animal/ Robert Jordan told her.

‘You swallowed it yourself, eh?’

T guess so/ Robert Jordan said.

‘And did you like the taste?’ Pilar turned now and grinned at
him.

‘Not much/

‘I thought not,’ Pilar said. ‘I thought not. But I give you back
your rabbit. Nor ever did I try to take your rabbit. That’s a good
name for her. I heard you call her that this morning.’

Robert Jordan felt his face redden.

‘You are a very hard woman,’ he told her.

‘No/ Pilar said. ‘But so simple I am very complicated. Are you
very complicated, Ingles}'

‘No. Nor not so simple.’

‘You please me, IngU$> Pilar said. Then she smiled and leaned
forward and smiled and shook her head. ‘Now if I could take the
rabbit from thee and take thee from the rabbit.’

‘You could not.’

‘I know it,’ Pilar said and smiled again. ‘Nor would I wish to.
But when I was young I could have.’

‘I believe it.’

‘You believe it?’

‘Surely/ Robert Jordan said. ‘But such talk is nonsense.’

‘It is not like thee,’ Maria said.

‘I am not much like myself to-day/ Pilar said. ‘Very little like
myself. Thy bridge has given me a headache, Ingles’

‘We can call it the Headache Bridge/ Robert Jordan said. ‘But
I will drop it in that gorge like a broken bird-cage.’

‘Good/ said Pilar. ‘Keep on talking like that.’

‘I’ll drop it as you break a banana from which you have re-
moved the skin/

‘I could eat a banana now,’ said Pilar. ‘Go on, Ingles. Keep on
talking largely.’

‘There is no need/ Robert Jordan said. ‘Let us get to camp.’

‘Thy duty/ Pilar said. ‘It will come quickly enough. I said that
I would leave the two of you.’

‘No, I have much to do/

‘That is much too and does not take long.’

‘Shut thy mouth, Pilar/ Maria said. ‘You speak grossly.’

‘I am gross/ Pilar said. ‘But I am also very delicate. Soy muy
delicada . I will leave the two of you. And the talk of jealousness
is nonsense. I was angry at Joaquin because I saw from his look
how ugly I am. I am only jealous that you are nineteen. It is not
a jealousy which lasts. You will not be nineteen always. Now I

She stood up and with a hand on one hip looked at Robert
152

Jordan, who was also standing. Maria sat on the ground under
the tree, her head dropped forward.

‘Let us all go to camp together,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘It is better
and there is much to do.’

Pilar nodded with her head toward Maria, who sat there, her
head turned away from them, saying nothing.

Pilar smiled and shrugged her shoulders almost imperceptibly
and said, ‘You know the way?*

‘I know it,’ Maria said, not raising her head.

*Pues me voyj Pilar said. ‘Then I am going. Well have some-
thing hearty for you to eat, Ingles

She started to walk off into the heather of the meadow toward
the stream that led down through it toward the camp.

‘Wait,’ Robert Jordan called to her. ‘It is better that we should
all go together.’

Maria sat there and said nothing.

Pilar did not return.

‘ Que va, go together,’ she said. ‘I will see thee at the camp.’

Robert Jordan stood there.

‘Is she all right?* he asked Maria. ‘She looked ill before.*

‘Let her go,’ Maria said, her head still down.

‘I think I should go with her.’

‘Let her go,’ said Maria. ‘Let her go ! *

CHAPTER 13

They were walking through the heather of the mountain
meadow and Robert Jordan felt the brushing of the heather
against his legs, felt the weight of his pistol in its holster against
his thigh, felt the sun on his head, felt the breeze from the snow
of the mountain peaks cool on his back and, in his hand, he felt
the girl’s hand firm and strong, the fingers locked in his. From it,
from the palm of her hand against the palm of his, from their
fingers locked together, and from her wrist across his wrist some-
thing came from her hand, her fingers, and her wrist to his that
was as fresh as the first light air that moving toward you over the
sea barely wrinkles the glassy surface of a calm, as light as a
feather moved across one’s lip, or a leaf falling when there is no

breeze, so light that it could be felt with the touch of their fingers
alone, but that was so strengthened, so intensified, and made so
urgent, so aching, and so strong by the hard pressure of their
fingers and the close-pressed palm and wrist, that it was as though
a current moved up his arm and filled his whole body with an
aching hollowness of wanting. With the sun shining on her hair,
tawny as wheat, and on her golden-brown smooth-lovely face,
and on the curve of her throat he bent her head back and held
her to him and kissed her. He felt her trembling as he kissed her
and he held the length of her body tight to him and felt her
breasts against his chest through the two khaki shirts, he felt them
small and firm and he reached and undid the buttons on her shirt
and bent and kissed her and she stood shivering, holding her head
back, his arm behind her. Then she dropped her chin to his
head and then he felt her hands holding his head and rocking it
against her. He straightened and with his two arms around her
held her so tightly that she was lifted off the ground, tight
against him, and he felt her trembling and then her lips were
on his throat, and then he put her down and said, ‘Maria, oh,
my Maria/

Then he said, ‘Where should we go?’

She did not say anything but slipped her hand inside of his
shirt and he felt her undoing the shirt buttons and she said, ‘You,
too, I want to kiss, too/

‘No, little rabbit/

‘Yes. Yes. Everything as you/

‘Nay. That is an impossibility/

‘Well, then. Oh, then. Oh, then. Oh/

Then there was the smell of heather crushed and the roughness
of the bent stalks under her head and the sun bright on her closed
eyes and all his life he would remember the curve of her throat
with her head pushed back into the heather roots and her lips that
moved smally and by themselves and the fluttering of the lashes
on the eyes tight closed against the sun and against everything,
and for her everything was red, orange, gold-red from the sun on
the closed eyes, and it all was that colour, all of it, the filling, the
possessing, the having, all of that colour, all in a blindness of that
colour. For him it was a dark passage which led to nowhere, then
to nowhere, then again to nowhere, once again to nowhere, al-
ways and for ever to nowhere, heavy on the elbows in the earth to

154

nowhere, dark, never any end to nowhere, hung on all time al-
ways to unknowing nowhere, this time and again for always to
nowhere, now not to be borne once again always and to nowhere,
now beyond all bearing up, up, up, and into nowhere, suddenly,
scaldingly, holdingly all nowhere gone and time absolutely still
and they were both there, time having stopped and he felt the
earth move out and away from under them.

Then he was lying on his side, his head deep in the heather,
smelling it and the smell of the roots and the earth and the sun
came through it and it was scratchy on his bare shoulders and
along his flanks and the girl was lying opposite him with her eyes
still shut and then she opened them and smiled at him and he
said very tiredly and from a great but friendly distance, ‘Hello,
rabbit.’ And she smiled and from no distance said, ‘Hello, my

Tm not an Ingles / he said very lazily.

‘Oh yes, you are,’ she said. ‘You’re my Ingles and reached and
took hold of both his ears and kissed him on the forehead.

‘There,’ she said. ‘How is that? Do I kiss thee better?’

Then they were walking along the stream together and he said,
‘Maria, I love thee and thou art so lovely and so wonderful and so
beautiful and it does such things to me to be with thee that I feel
as though I wanted to die w T hen I am loving thee.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I die each time. Do you not die?’

‘No. Almost. But did thee feel the earth move?’

‘Yes. As I died. Put thy arm around me, please.’

‘No. I have thy hand. Thy hand is enough/

He looked at her and across the meadow where a hawk was
hunting and the big afternoon clouds were coming now over the
mountains.

‘And it is not thus for thee with others?’ Maria asked him,
they now walking hand in hand.

‘No. Truly.’

‘Thou hast loved many others/

‘Some. But not as thee/

‘And it was not thus? Truly? 9

‘It was a pleasure but it was not thus/

‘And then the earth moved. The earth never moved before?*

‘Nay. Truly never/

‘Ay,’ she said. ‘And this we have for one day/

*55

He said nothing.

‘But we have had it now at least/ Maria said. ‘And do you like
me too? Do I please thee ? I will look better later.*

‘Thou art very beautiful now.’

‘Nay/ she said. ‘But stroke thy hand across my head.*

He did that, feeling her cropped hair soft and flattening and
then rising between his fingers and he put both hands on her head
and turned her face up to his and kissed her.

‘I like to kiss very much/ she said. ‘But I do not do it well.’

‘Thou hast no need to kiss.’

‘Yes, I have. If I am to be thy woman I should please thee in all
ways/

‘You please me enough. I would not be more pleased. There is
nothing I could do if I were more pleased.’

‘But you will see/ she said very happily. ‘My hair amuses thee
now because it is odd. But every day it is growing. It will be long
and then I will not look ugly and perhaps you will love me very
much.’

‘Thou hast a lovely body,’ he said. ‘The loveliest in the world.’

‘It is only young and thin.’

‘No. In a fine body there is magic. I do not know what makes
it in one and not in another. But thou hast it/

‘For thee/ she said.

‘Nay/

‘Yes. For thee and for thee always and only for thee. But it is
little to bring thee. I would learn to take good care of thee. But
tell me truly. Did the earth never move for thee before?’

‘Never/ he said truly.

‘Now am I happy/ she said. ‘Now am I truly happy.*

‘You are thinking of something else now?’ she asked him.

‘Yes. My work/

‘I wish we had horses to ride/ Maria said. ‘In my happiness I
would like to be on a good horse and ride fast with thee riding
fast beside me and we would ride faster and faster, galloping, and
never pass my happiness. ’

‘We could take thy happiness in a plane,’ he said absently.

‘And go over and over in the sky like the little pursuit planes
shining in the sun/ she said. ‘Rolling it in loops and in dives.
iQuS buenoV she laughed. ‘My happiness would not even notice
it/

i 5 6

‘Thy happiness has a good stomach/ he said half hearing what
she said.

Because now he was not there. He was walking beside her but
his mind was thinking of the problem of the bridge now and it
was all clear and hard and sharp as when a camera lens is brought
into focus. He saw the two posts and Anselmo and the gipsy
.watching. He saw the road empty and he saw movement on it.
He saw where he would place the two automatic rifles to get the
most level field of fire, and who will serve them, he thought, me
at the end, but who at the start? He placed the charges, wedged
and lashed them, sunk his caps and crimped them, ran his wires,
hooked them up and got back to where he had placed the old box
of the exploder, and then he started to think of all the.things that
could have happened and that might go wrong. Stop it, he told
himself. You have made love to this girl and now your head is
clear, properly clear, and you start to worry. It is one thing to
think you must do and it is another thing to worry. Don’t worry.
You mustn’t worry. You know the things that you may have to
do and you know what may happen. Certainly it may happen.

You went into it knowing what you were fighting for. You
were fighting against exactly what you were doing and being
forced into doing to have any chance of winning. So now he was
compelled to use these people whom he liked as you should use
troops toward whom you have no feeling at all if you were to be
successful. Pablo was evidendy the smartest. He knew how bad
it was instandy. The woman was all for it, and still was; but the
realization of what it really consisted in had overcome her steadily
and it had done plenty to her already. Sordo recognized it in-
standy and would do it but he did not like it any more than he,
Robert Jordan, liked it.

So you say that it is not that which will happen to yourself but
that which may happen to the woman and the girl and to the
others that you think of. All right. What would have happened
to them if you had not come? What happened to them and what
passed with them before you were ever here? You must not think
in that way. You have no responsibility fdr them except in action.
The orders do not come from you. They come from Golz. And
who is Golz? A good general. The best you’ve ever served under.
But should a man carry out impossible orders knowing what they
lead to? Even though they come from Golz, who is the party as

well as the army? Yes. He should carry them out because it is
only in the performing of them that they can prove to be im-
possible. How do you know they are impossible until you have
tried them? If everyone said orders were impossible to carry out
when they were received where would you be? Where would we
all be if you just said, ‘Impossible/ when orders came?

He had seen enough of commanders to whom all orders were
impossible. That swine Gomez in Estremadura. He had seen
enough attacks when the flanks did not advance because it was
impossible. No, he would carry out the orders and it was bad
luck that you liked the people you must do it with.

In all the work that they, the partizans , did, they brought
added danger and bad luck to the people that sheltered them and
worked with them. For what? So that, eventually, there should
be no more danger and so that the country should be a good place
to live in. That was true no matter how trite it sounded.

If the Republic lost it would be impossible for those who be-
lieved in it to live in Spain. But would it? Yes, he knew that it
would be, from the things that happened in the parts the fascists
had already taken.

Pablo was a swine but the others were fine people and was it
not a betrayal of them all to get them to do this? Perhaps it was.
But if they did not do it two squadrons of cavalry would come
and hunt them out of these hills in a week.

No. There was nothing to be gained by leaving them alone.
Except that all people should be left alone and you should inter-
fere with no one. So he believed that, did he? Yes, he believed
that. And what about a planned society and the rest of it? That
was for the others to do. He had something else to do after this
war. He fought now in this war because it had started in a country
that he loved and he believed in the Republic and that if it were
destroyed life would be unbearable for all those people who be-
lieved in it. He was under Communist discipline for die duration
of the war. Here in Spain the Communists offered the best discip-
line and the soundest and sanest for the prosecution of the war.
He accepted their discipline for the duration of the war because,
in the conduct of the war, they were the only party whose pro-
gramme and whose discipline he could respect.

What were his politics then? He had none* now, he told him-
self. But do not tell anyone else that, he thought. Don’t ever admit

158

that. And what are you going to do afterwards? I am going back
and earn my living teaching Spanish as before, and I am going to
write a true book. I’ll bet, he said. 1*11 bet that will be easy.

He would have to talk with Pablo about politics. It would cer-
tainly be interesting to see what his political development had
been. The classical move from left to right, probably; like old
Lerroux. Pablo was quite a lot like Lerroux. Prieto was as bad.
Pablo and Prieto had about an equal faith in the ultimate victory.
They all had the politics of horse thieves. He believed in the
Republic as a form of government but the Republic would have
to get rid of all of that bunch of horse thieves that brought it to
the pass it was in when the rebellion started. Was there ever
a people whose leaders were as truly their enemies as this
onet

Enemies of the people. That was a phrase he might omit. That
was a catch phrase he would skip. That was one thing that sleep-
ing with Maria had done. He had gotten to be as bigoted and
hide-bound about his politics as a hard-shelled Baptist and phrases
like enemies of the people came into his mind without his much
criticizing them in any way. Any sort of cliches both revolutionary
and patriotic. His mind employed them without criticism. Of
course they were true but it was too easy to be nimble about using
them. But since last night and this afternoon his mind was much
clearer and cleaner on that business. Bigotry is an odd thing. To
be bigoted you have to be absolutely sure that you are right and
nothing makes that surety and righteousness like continence.
Continence is the foe of heresy.

How would that premise stand up if he examined it? That was
probably why the Communists were always cracking down on
Bohemianism. When you were drunk or when you committed
either fornication or adultery you recognized your own personal
fallibility of that so mutable substitute for the apostles’ creed, the
party line. Down with Bohemianism, the sin of Mayakovsky.

But Mayakovsky was a saint again. That was because he was
safely dead. You’ll be safely dead yourself, he told himself. Now
stop thinking that sort of thing. Think about Mapa.

Maria was very hard on his bigotry. So far she had not affected
his resolution but he would much prefer not to die. He would
abandon a hero’s or a martyr’s end gladly. He did not want to
make a Thermopylae, nor be Horatius at any bridge, nor be the

I 59

Dutch boy with his finger in that dyke. No. He would like to
spend some time with Maria. That was the simplest expression of
it. He would like to spend a long, long time with her.

He did not believe there was ever going to be any such thing as
a long time any more but if there ever was such a thing he would
like to spend it with her. We could go into the hotel and register
as Doctor and Mrs Livingstone I presume, he thought.

Why not marry her? Sure, he thought. I will marry her. Then
we will be Mr. and Mrs Robert Jordan of Sun Valley, Idaho. Or
Corpus Christi, Texas, or Butte, Montana.

Spanish girls make wonderful wives. Fve never had one so I
know. And when I get my job back at the university she can be
an instructor’s wife and when undergraduates who take Spanish
IV come in to smoke pipes in the evening and I have those so
valuable informal discussions about Quevedo, Lope de Vega,
Galdos, and the other always admirable dead, Maria can tell
them about how some of the blue-shirted crusaders for the true
faith sat on her head while others twisted her arms and pulled
her skirts up and stuffed them in her mouth.

I wonder how they will like Maria in Missoula, Montana? That
is if I can get a job back in Missoula. I suppose that I am ticketed
as a Red there now for good and will be on the general blacklist.
Though you never know. You never can tell. They’ve no proof
of what you do, and as a matter of fact they would never believe
it if you told them, and my passport was valid for Spain before
they issued the restrictions.

The time for getting back will not be until the fall of thirty-
seven. I left in the summer of thirty-six and though the leave is
for a year you do not need to be back until the fall term opens in
the following year. There is a lot of time between now and the
fall term. There is a lot of time between now and the day after to-
morrow if you want to put it that way. No. I think there is no
need to worry about the university. Just you turn up there in the
fall and it will be all right. Just try and turn up there.

But it has been a strange life for a long time now. Damned if it
hasn’t. Spain*was your work and your job, so being in Spain was
natural and sound. You had worked summers on engineering
projects and in the forest service building roads and in the park
and learned to handle powder, so the demolition was a sound and
normal job too. Always a little hasty, but sound.

160

Once you accept the idea o£ demolition as a problem it is only a
problem. But there was plenty that was not so good that went
with it although God knows you took it easily enough. There was
the constant attempt to approximate the conditions o£ successful
assassination that accompanied the demolition. Did big words
make it more defensible? Did they make killing any more palat-
able? You took to it a little too readily if you ask me, he told him-
self. And what you will be like or just exactly what you will be
suited for when ychi leave the service of the Republic 1$, to me, he
thought, extremely doubtful. But my guess is you will get rid of
all that by writing about it, he said. Once you write it down it is
all gone. It will be a good book if you can write it. Much better
than the other.

But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is
to-day, to-night, to-morrow, to-day, to-night, to-morrow, oVer
and over again (I hope), he thought, and so you had better take
what time there is and be very thankful for it. If the bridge goes
bad. It does not look too good just now.

But Maria has been good. Has she not? Oh, has she not, he
thought. Maybe that is what I am to get now from life. Maybe
that is my life and instead of it being threescore years and ten it is
forty-eight hours or just threescore hours and ten or twelve rather.
Twenty-four hours in- a day would be threescore and twelve for
the three full days.

I suppose it is possible to live as full a life in seventy hours as in
seventy years; granted that your life has been full up to the time
that the seventy hours start and that you have reached a certain
age.

What nonsense, he thought. What rot you get to thinking by
yourself. That is really nonsense. And maybe it isn’t nonsense
too. Well, we will see. The last time I slept with a girl was in
Madrid. No it wasn’t. It was in the Escorial and, except that I
woke in the night and thought it was someone else and was ex-
cited until I realized who it really was, it was just dragging ashes;
except that it was pleasant enough. And the time before that was
in Madrid and except for some lying and pretending I did to
myself as to identity while things were going on, it was the same
or something less. So I am no romantic glorifier of the Spanish
Woman nor did I ever think of a casual piece as anything much
other than a casual piece in any country. But when I am with
161

Maria I love her so that I feel, literally, as though I would die and
I never believed in that nor thought that it could happen.

So if your life trades its seventy years for seventy hours I have
that value now and I am lucky enough to know it. And if there
is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor
from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing
to praise and I am very happy with it. Now, ahora , maintenant,
heute . Now, it has a funny sound to be a whole world and your
life. Estd* noche, to-night, ce soir y heute abbnd. Life and wife,
Vie and Mari. No, it didn’t work out. The French turned it into
husband. There was now and frau ; but that did not prove any-
thing either. Take dead, mort, muerto, and todt. Todt was the
deadest of them all. War, guerre y guerra, and \rieg. Krieg was
the most like war, or was it? Oh was it only that he knew Ger-
nlan the least well? Sweetheart, cherie, prenda, and schatz . He
would trade them all for Maria. There was a name.

Well, they would all be doing it together and it would not be
long now. It certainly looked worse all the time. It was just some-
thing that you could not bring off in the morning. In an impos-
sible situation you hang on until night to get away. You try to
last out until night to get back in. You are all right, maybe, if you
can stick it out until dark and then get in. So what if you start
this sticking it out at daylight? How about that? And that poor
bloody Sordo abandoning his pidgin Spanish to explain it to him
so carefully. As though he had not thought about that whenever
he had done any particularly bad thinking ever since Golz had
first mentioned it. As though he hadn’t been living with that like
a lump of undigested dough in the pit of his stomach ever since
the night before the night before last.

What a business. You go along your whole life and they seem
as though they mean something and they always end up not
meaning anything. There was never any of what this is. You
think that is one thing that you will never have. And then, on a
lousy show like this, co-ordinating two chicken-crut guerrilla
bands to help you blow a bridge under impossible conditions, to
abort a counter-offensive that will probably already be started,
you run into a girl like this Maria. Sure. That is what you would
do. You ran into her rather late, that was all.

So a woman like that Pilar practically pushed this girl into your
sleeping bag and what happens? Yes, what happens? What hap-

162

pens? You tell me what happens, please. Yes. That is just what
happens. That is exactly what happens.

Don’t lie to yourself about Pilar pushing her into your sleeping
robe and try to make it nothing or to make it lousy. You were
gone when you first saw her. When she first opened her mouth
and spoke to you it was there already and you know it. Since you
have it and you never thought you would have it, there is no sense
throwing dirt at it, when you know what it is and you know it
came the first time you looked at her as she came out bent over
carrying that iron cooking platter.

It hit you then and you know it and so why lie about it? You
went all strange inside every time you looked at her and every
time she looked at you. So why don’t you admit it? All right. I'll
admit it. And as for Pilar, pushing her on to you, all Pilar did was
be an intelligent woman. She had taken good care of the girl and
she saw what was coming the minute the girl came back into the
cave with the cooking dish.

So she made things easier. She made things easier so that there
was last night and this afternoon. She is a damned sight more
civilized than you are and she knows what time is all about. Yes,
he said to himself, I think we can admit that she has certain
notions about the value of time. She took a beating and all be-
cause she did not want other people losing what she’d lost and
then the idea of admitting it was lost was too big a thing to
swallow. So she took a beating back there on the hill and I guess
we did not make it any easier for her.

Well, so that is what happens and what has happened and you
might as well admit it and now you will never have two whole
nights with her. Not a lifetime, not to live together, not to have
what people were always supposed to have, not at all. One night
that is past, once one afternoon, one night to come; may be. No,
sir.

Not time, not happiness, not fun, not children, not a house, not
a bathroom, not a clean pair of pyjamas, not the morning paper,
not to wake up together, not to wake and know she’s there and
that you’re not alone. No. None of that. But why, when this is all
you are going to get in life of what you want; when you have
found it; why not just one night in bed with sheets?

You ask for the impossible. You ask for the ruddy impossible.
So if you love this girl as much as you say you do, you had better

love her very hard and make up in intensity what the relation
will lack in duration and in continuity. Do you hear that ? In the
old days people devoted a lifetime to it. And now when you have
found it if you get two nights you wonder where all the luck
came from. Two nights. Two nights to love, honour, and cherish.
For better and for worse. In sickness and in death. No that wasn’t
it. In sickness and in health. Till death do us part. In two nights.
Much more than likely. Much more than likely and now lay off
that sort of thinking. You can stop that now. That’s not good for
you. Do nothing that is not good for you. Sure that’s it.

This was what Golz had talked about. The longer he was
around, the smarter Golz seemed. So this was what he was ask-
ing about; the compensation of irregular service. Had Golz had
this and was it the urgency and the lack of time and the circum-
stances that made it? Was this something that happened to every-
one given comparable circumstances? And did he only think it
was something special because it was happening to him? Had
Golz slept around in a hurry when he was commanding irregular
cavalry in the Red Army and had the combination of the circum-
stances and the rest of it made the girls seem the way Maria was?

Probably Golz knew all about this too and wanted to make the
point that you must make your whole life in the two nights that
are given to you; that living as we do now you must concentrate
all of that which you should always have into the short time that
you can have it.

It was a good system of belief. But he did not believe that Maria
had only been made by the circumstances. Unless, of course, she
is a reaction from her own circumstances as well as his. Her one
circumstance is not so good, he thought. No, not so good.

If this was how it was then this was how it was. But there was
no law that made him say he liked it. I did not know that I could
ever feel what I have felt, he thought. Nor that this could happen
to me. I would like to have it for my whole life. You will, the
other part of him said. You will. You have it now and that is all
your whole life is; now. There is nothing else than now. There is
neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any to-morrow. How old
must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now
is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it
will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And
if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get,

164

you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any
biblical span.

So now do not worry, take what you have, and do your work
and you will have a long life and a very merry one. Hasn’t it been
merry lately? What are you complaining about? That’s the thing
about this sort of work, he told himself, and was very pleased
with the thought, it isn’t so much what you learn as it is the people
you meet. He was pleased then because he was joking and he
came back to the girl.

‘I love you, rabbit,’ he said to the girl. ‘What was it you were
saying?’

‘I was saying,’ she told him, ‘that you must not worry about
your work because I will not bother you nor interfere. If there is
anything I can do you will tell me.’

‘There’s nothing,’ he said. ‘It is really very simple.*

‘I will learn from Pilar what I should do to take care of a man
well and those things I will do,’ Maria said. ‘Then, as I learn, I
will discover things for myself and other things you can tell me.’

‘There is nothing to do.’

‘ Que va^ man, there is nothing ! Thy sleeping robe, this morn-
ing, should have been shaken and aired and hung somewhere in
the sun. Then, before the dew comes, it should be taken into
shelter.’

‘Go on, rabbit.’

‘Thy socks should be washed and dried. I would see thee had
two pair.’

‘What else?’

‘If thou would show me I would clean and oil thy pistol.’

‘Kiss me,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘Nay, this is serious. Wilt thou show me about the pistol? Pilar
has rags and oil. There is a cleaning rod inside the cave that
should fit it.’

‘Sure. I’ll show you.’

‘Then,’ Maria said. ‘If you will teach me to shoot it either one
of us could shoot the other and himself, or herself, if one were
wounded and it were necessary to avoid capture.’

‘Very interesting,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Do you have many ideas
like that? *

‘Not many,’ Maria said. ‘But it is a good one. Pilar gave me
this and showed me how to use it.’ She opened the breast pocket
165

of her shirt and took out a cut-down leather holder such as pocket
combs are carried in and, removing a wide rubber band that
closed both ends, took out a Gem-type, single-edged razor blade.
‘I keep this always/ she explained. ‘Pilar says you must make the
cut here just below the ear and draw it toward here.’ She showed
him with her finger. ‘She says there is big artery there and that
drawing the blade from there you cannot miss it. Also, she says
there is no pain and you must simply press firmly below the ear
and draw it downward. She says it is nothing and that they
cannot stop it if it is done. *

‘That’s right,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘That’s the carotid artery.*

So she goes around with that all the time, he thought, as a
definitely accepted and properly organized possibility.

‘But I would rather have thee shoot me,’ Maria said. ‘Promise
if there is ever any need that thou wilt shoot me.’

‘Sure,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘I promise.*

‘Thank thee very much,’ Maria told him. ‘I know it is not easy
to do.’

‘That’s all right,’ Robert Jordan said.

You forget all this, he thought. You forget about the beauties
of a civil war when you keep your mind too much on your work.
You have forgotten this. Well, you are supposed, to. Kashkin
couldn’t forget it and it spoiled his work. Or do you think the old
boy had a hunch? It was very strange because he had experienced
absolutely no emotion about the shooting of Kashkin. He ex-
pected that at’ some time he might have it. But so far there had
been absolutely none.

‘But there are other things I can do for thee,’ Maria told him,
walking close beside him, now, very serious and womanly.

‘Besides shoot me?’

‘Yes. I can roll cigarettes for thee when thou hast no more of
those with tubes. Pilar has taught me to roll them very well, tight
and neat and not spilling.*

‘Excellent,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘Do you lick them yourself?’

‘Yes,’ the girl said, ‘and when thou art wounded I will care for
thee and dress thy wound and wash thee and feed thee — *

‘Maybe I won’t be wounded,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘Then when you are sick I will care for thee and make thee
soups and clean thee and do all for thee. And I will read to
thee.-

166

‘Maybe I won’t get sick/

‘Then I will bring thee coffee in the morning when thou
wakest — ’

‘Maybe I don’t like coffee,’ Robert Jordan told her.

‘Nay, but you do,’ the girl said happily. ‘This morning you
took two cups.’

‘Suppose I get tired of coffee and there’s no need to shoot me
and I’m neither wounded nor sick and I give up smoking and
have only one pair of socks and hang up my robe myself. What
then, rabbit?’ he patted her on the back. ‘What then?*

‘Then,’ said Maria, ‘I will borrow the scissors of Pilar and cut
thy hair.*

‘I don’t like to have my hair cut.*

‘Neither do I,’ said Maria. ‘And I like thy hair as it is. So. If
there is nothing to do for thee, I will sit by thee and watch thee
and in the nights we will make love.’

‘Good,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘The last project is very sensible.’

‘To me it seems the same,’ Maria smiled. ‘Oh, Ingles ,* she said.

‘My name is Roberto.’

‘Nay. Rut I call thee Ingles as Pilar does.*

‘Still it is Roberto.’

‘No,’ she told him. ‘Now for a whole day it is Ingles. And
Ingles , can I help thee with thy work?’

‘No. What I do now I do alone and very coldly in my head.*

‘Good,’ she said. ‘And when will it be finished?’

‘To-night, with luck.’

‘Good,’ she said.

Below them were the last woods that led to the camp.

‘Who is that?’ Robert Jordan asked and pointed.

‘Pilar,’ the girl said, looking along his arm. ‘Surely it is Pilar.*

At the lower edge of the meadow where the first trees grew the
woman was sitting, her head on her arms. She looked like a dark
bundle from where they stood; black against the brown of the
tree trunk.

‘Come on,’ Robert Jordan said and started to run toward her
through the knee-high heather. It was heavy and hard to run in
and when he had run a little way, he slowed and walked. He
could see the woman’s head was on her folded arms and she
looked broad and black against the tree trunk. He came up to
her and said, ‘Pilar ! * sharply.

167

The woman, raised her head and looked up at him.

‘Oh,* she said. ‘You have terminated already? *

‘Art thou ill?’ he asked and bent down by her.

'Quivaj she said. ‘I was asleep/

‘Pilar/ Maria, who had come up, said and kneeled down by
her. ‘How are you? Are you all right?’

‘I’m magnificent,’ Pilar said but she did not get up. She looked
at the two of them. ‘Well, Ingles she said. ‘You have been doing
manly tricks again?’

‘You are all right?’ Robert Jordan asked, ignoring the words.

‘Why not? I slept. Did you?’

‘No.’

‘Well,’ Pilar said to the girl. ‘It seems to agree with you.’

Maria blushed and said nothing.

‘Leave her alone,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘No one spoke to thee,’ Pilar told him. ‘Maria,’ she said and
her voice was hard. The girl did not look up.

‘Maria,’ the woman said again. ‘I said it seems to agree with
thee.’

‘Oh, leave her alone,’ Robert Jordan said again.

‘Shut up, you,’ Pilar said without looking at him. ‘Listen,
Maria, tell me one thing.*

‘No,’ Maria said and shook her head.

‘Maria,’ Pilar said, and her voice was as hard as her face and
there was nothing friendly in her face. ‘Tell me one thing of thy
own volition.’

The girl shook her head.

Robert Jordan was thinking, if I did not have to work with this
woman and her drunken man and her chicken-crut outfit, I
would slap her so hard across the face that -

‘Go ahead and tell me,’ Pilar said to the girl.

‘No,’ Maria said. ‘No.’

‘Leave her alone,’ Robert Jordan said and his voice did not
sound like his own voice. I’ll slap her anyway and the hell with
it, he thought.

Pilar did not even speak to him. It was not like a snake charm-
ing a bird, nor a cat with a bird. There was nothing predatory.
Nor was there anything perverted about it. There was a spread-
ing, though, as a cobra’s hood spreads. He could feel this. He
could feel the menace of the spreading. But the spreading was a

domination, not of evil, but of searching, I wish I did not see this,
Robert Jordan thought. But it is not a business for slapping.

‘Maria,’ Pilar said. ‘I will not touch thee. Tell me now of thy
own volition.’

‘D<? tu propia voluntad the words were in Spanish.

The girl shook her head.

‘Maria,’ Pilar said. ‘Now and of thy own volition. You hear
me? Anything at all.’

‘No,’ the girl said softly. ‘No and no.’

‘Now you will tell me,’ Pilar told her. ‘Anything at all. You
will see. Now you will tell me.’

‘The earth moved,’ Maria said, not looking at the woman.
‘Truly. It was a thing I cannot tell thee.’

‘So,’ Pilar said and her voice was warm and friendly and there
was no compulsion in it. But Robert Jordan noticed there were
small drops of perspiration on her forehead and her lips. ‘So there
was that. So that was it.’

‘It is true,’ Maria saidand bit her lip.

‘Of course it is true,’ Pilar said kindly. ‘But do not tell it to
your own people for they never will believe you. You have no
Cah blood, Ingles ?’

She got to her feet, Robert Jordan helping her up.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not that I know of.’

‘Nor has the Maria that she knows of,’ Pilar said. ‘ Pues es muy
raro. It is very strange.’

‘But it happened, Pilar,’ Maria said.

‘ jC6mo que no } hija ?’ Pilar said. ‘Why not, daughter? When
I was young the earth moved so that you could feel it all shift in
space and were afraid it would go out from under you. It hap-
pened every night.’

‘You lie,’ Maria said.

‘Yes,’ Pilar said. ‘I lie. It never moves more than three times in
a lifetime. Did it really move?’

‘Yes,’ the girl said. ‘Truly.’

‘For you, IngUsV Pilar looked at Robert Jordan. ‘Don’t lie.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Truly.’

‘Good,’ said Pilar. ‘Good. That is something.’

‘What do you mean about the three times?’ Maria asked. ‘Why
do you say that?’

‘Three times,’ said Pilar. ‘Now you’ve had one.’

109

‘Only three times?’

‘For most people, never,’ Pilar told her. ‘You are sure it
moved?’

‘One could have fallen off/ Maria said.

‘I guessed it moved, then, ’ Pilar said. ‘Come, then, and let us
get to camp/

‘What’s this nonsense about three times?’ Robert Jordan said
to the big woman as they walked through the pines together.

‘Nonsense?* she looked at him wryly. ‘Don’t talk to me of non-
sense, little English/

‘Is it wizardry like the palms of the hands?’

‘Nay, it is common and proven knowledge with Gitanos /

‘But we are not Gitanos /

‘Nay. But you have had a little luck. Non-gipsies have a little
luck sometimes/

‘You mean it truly about the three times ? ’

She looked at him again, oddly. ‘Leave me, Ingles / she said.
‘Don’t molest me. You are too young for me to speak to/

‘But, Pilar/ Maria said.

‘Shut up/ Pilar told her. ‘You have had one and there are two
more in the world for thee/

‘And you?’ Robert Jordan asked her.

‘Two/ said Pilar and put up two fingers. ‘Two. And there will
never be a third.’

‘Why not?’ Maria asked.

‘Oh, shut up/ Pilar said. ‘Shut up. Busnes of thy age bore me/

‘Why not a third? ’ Robert Jordan asked.

‘Oh, shut up, will you?’ Pilar said. ‘Shut up !’

All right, Robert Jordan said to himself. Only I am not having
any. I’ve known a lot of gipsies and they are strange enough. But
so are we. The difference is we have to make an honest living.
Nobody knows what tribes we came from nor what our tribal
inheritance is nor what the mysteries were in the woods where
the people lived that we came from. All we know is that we do
not know. We know nothing about what happens to us in the
nights. When it happens in the day though, it is something.
Whatever happened, happened and now this woman not only
has to make the girl say it when she did not want to; but she has
to take it over and make it her own. She has to make it into a
gipsy thing. I thought she took a beating up the hill but she was

iyu

certainly dominating just now back there. If it had been evil she
should have been shot. But it wasn’t evil. It was only wanting to
keep her hold on life. To keep it through Maria.

When you get through with this war you might take up the
study of women, he said to himself. You could start with Pilar.
She has put in a pretty complicated day, if you ask me. She never
brought in the gipsy stuff before. Except the hand, he thought.
Yes, of course the hand. And I don’t think she was faking about
the hand. She wouldn’t tell me what she saw, of course. What-
ever she saw she believed in herself. But that proves nothing.

‘Listen, Pilar,’ he said to the woman.

Pilar looked at him and smiled.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Don’t be so mysterious,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘These mysteries
tire me very much.’

‘So?’ Pilar said.

‘I do not believe in ogres, soothsayers, fortune tellers, or
chicken-crut gipsy witchcraft.’

‘Oh,’ said Pilar.

‘No. And you can leave the girl alone.’

‘I will leave the girl alone.’

‘And leave the mysteries,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘We have enough
work and enough things that will be done without complicating
it with chicken-crut. Fewer mysteries and more work.’

‘I see,’ said Pilar and nodded her head in agreement. ‘And
listen, Ingles’ she said and smiled at him. ‘Did the earth move?’

‘Yes, God-damn you. It moved.’

Pilar laughed and laughed and stood looking at Robert Jordan
laughing.

‘Oh, IngUs , IngUs she said laughing. ‘You are very comical.
You must do much work now to regain thy dignity.’

The hell with you, Robert Jordan thought. But he kept his
mouth shut. While they had spoken the sun had clouded over
and as he looked back up toward the mountains the sky was now
heavy and grey.

‘Sure,’ Pilar said to him, looking at the sky. ‘It will snow.’

‘Now? Almost in June?’

‘Why not? These mountains do not know the names of the
months. We are in the moon of May.*

‘It can’t be snow,’ he said. ‘It cant snow/

‘Just the same, Ingles / she said to him, ‘it will snow/

Robert Jordan looked up at the thick grey of the sky with the
sun gone faintly yellow, and now as he watched gone completely
and the grey becoming uniform so that it was soft and heavy;
the grey now cutting off the tops of the mountains.

‘Yes/ he said. *1 guess you are right/

CHAPTER 14

By the time they reached the camp it was snowing and the flakes
were dropping diagonally through the pines. They slanted
through the trees, sparse at first and circling as they fell, and then,
as the cold wind came driving down the mountain, they came
whirling and thick and Robert Jordan stood in front of the cave
in a rage and watched them.

‘We will have much snow/ Pablo said. His voice was thick and
his eyes were red and bleary.

‘Has the gipsy come in?’ Robert Jordan asked him.

‘No/ Pablo said. ‘Neither him nor the old man/

‘Will you come with me to the upper post on the road ? *

‘No/ Pablo said. ‘I will take no part in this/

‘I will find it myself/

‘In this storm you might miss it/ Pablo said. ‘I would not go
now/

‘It’s just downhill to the road and then follow it up/

‘You could find it. But thy two sentries will be coming up now
with the snow and you would miss them on the way/

‘The old man is waiting for me/

‘Nay. He will come in now with the snow/

Pablo looked at the snow that was blowing fast now past the
mouth of the cave and said, ‘You do not like the snow, IngUsV
Robert Jordan swore and Pablo looked at him through his
bleary eyes and laughed.

‘With this thy offensive goes, InglSs / he said. ‘Come into the
cave and thy people will be in directly/

Inside the cave Maria was busy at the fire and Pilar at the
kitchen table. The fire was smoking but, as the girl worked with
it, poking in a stick of wood and then fanning it with a folded

paper, there was a puff and then a flare and the wood was burn-
ing, drawing brightly as the wind sucked a draught out of the
hole in the roof.

‘And this snow,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘You think there will be
much?’ *

‘Much,’ Pablo said contentedly. Then called to Pilar, ‘You don’t
like it, woman, either? Now that you command you do not like
this snow?’

mi que ?’ Pilar said, over her shoulder. ‘If it snows it snows.’
‘Drink some wine, Ingles ,’ Pablo said. ‘I have been drinking
all day waiting for the snow.’

‘Give me a cup,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘To the snow,’ Pablo said and touched cups with him. Robert
Jordan looked him in the eyes and clinked his cup. You bleary-
eyed murderous sod, he thought. I’d like to clink this cup against
your teeth. Ta\e it easy , he told himself, ta\e it easy.

‘It is very beautiful the snow,’ Pablo said. ‘You won’t want to
sleep outside with the snow falling.’

So that’s on your mind too is it? Robert Jordan thought.
‘You’ve a lot of troubles, haven’t you, Pablo?’

‘No?’ he said, politely.

‘No. Very cold,’ Pablo said. ‘Very wet.’

You don’t know why those old eiderdowns cost sixty-five
dollars, Robert Jordan thought. I’d like to have a dollar for every
time I’ve slept in that thing in the snow.

‘Then I should sleep in here?’ he asked politely.

‘Yes.’

‘Thanks,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘I’ll be sleeping outside.’

‘In the snow ? ’

‘Yes ’ (damn your bloody, red pig-eyes and your swine-bristly
swines-end of a face). ‘In the snow.’ (In the utterly-damned,
ruinous, unexpected, slutting, defeat-conniving, bastard-cessery
of the snow.)

He went over to where Maria had just put another piece of pine
on the fire.

‘Very beautiful, the snow,’ he said to the girl.

‘But it is bad for the work, isn’t it?* she asked him. ‘Aren’t you
worried?’

‘Qu6 va ,’ he said. ‘Worrying is no good. When will supper be
ready?’

173

‘I thought you would have an appetite,* Pilar said. ‘Do you
want a cut of cheese now ? *

‘Thanks,’ he said and she cut him a slice, reaching up to un-
hook the big cheese that hung in a net from the ceiling, draw-
ing a knife across the open end and handing him the heavy
slice. He stood, eating it. It was just a little too goaty to be
enjoyable.

‘Maria,* Pablo said from the table where he was sitting.

‘What?’ the girl asked.

‘Wipe the table clean, Maria,* Pablo said and grinned at Robert
Jordan.

‘Wipe thine own spillings,’ Pilar said to him. ‘Wipe first thy
chin and thy shirt and then the table.*

‘Maria,’ Pablo called.

‘Pay no heed to him. He is drunk,’ Pilar said.

‘Maria,’ Pablo called. ‘It is still snowing and the snow is beau-
tiful.*

He doesn’t know about that robe, Robert Jordan thought. Good
old pig-eyes doesn’t know why I paid the Woods boys sixty-five
dollars for that robe. I wish the gipsy would come in though. As
soon as the gipsy comes I’ll go after the old man. I should go now
but it is very possible that I would miss them. I don’t know where
he is posted.

‘Want to make snowballs?’ he said to Pablo. ‘Want to have a
snowball fight?’

‘What?’ Pablo asked. ‘What do you propose?’

‘Nothing,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Got your saddles covered up
good?’

‘Yes.’

Then in English Robert Jordan said, ‘Going to grain those
horses or peg them out and let them dig for it?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. It’s your problem, old pal. I’m going out of here on
my feet.’

‘Why do you speak in English? ’ Pablo asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘When I get very tired
sometimes I speak English. Or when I get very disgusted. Or
baffled, say. When I get highly baffled I just talk English to hear
the sound of it. It’s a reassuring noise. You ought to try it some-
time/

*74

‘What do you say, Ingles ?’ Pilar said. ‘It sounds very interesting
but I do not understand.’

‘Nothing,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘I said, “nothing” in English.’

‘Well, then, talk Spanish,’ Pilar said. ‘It’s shorter and simpler
in Spanish.’

‘Surely,’ Robert Jordan said. But oh boy, he thought, oh Pablo,
oh Pilar, oh Maria, oh you two brothers in the corner whose
names I’ve forgotten and must remember, but I get tired of it
sometimes. Of it and of you and of me and of the war and why In
all why, did it have to snow now? That’s too bloody much. No,
it’s not. Nothing is too bloody much. You just have to take it and
light out of it and now stop prima-donnaing and accept the fact
that it is snowing as you did a moment ago and the next thing is
to check with your gipsy and pick up your old man. But to snow l
Now in this month. Cut it out, he said to himself. Cut it out and
take it. It’s that cup, you know. How did it go about that cup?
He’d either have to improve his memory or else never think of
quotations because when you missed one it hung in your mind
like a name you had forgotten and you could not get rid of it.
How did it go about that cup ?

‘Let me have a cup of wine, please,’ he said in Spanish. Then,
‘Lots of snow? Eh?’ he said to Pablo. ‘ Mucha nievel

The drunken man looked up at him and grinned. He nodded
his head and grinned again.

‘No offensive. No aviones. No bridge. Just snow,’ Pablo said.

‘You expect it to last a long time?’ Robert Jordan sat down by
him. ‘You think we’re going to be snowed in all summer, Pablo,
old boy?’

‘All summer, no,’ Pablo said. ‘To-night and to-morrow,
yes.’

‘What makes you think so?’

‘There are two kinds of storms,’ Pablo said, heavily and judi-
ciously. ‘One comes from the Pyrenees. With this one there is
great cold. It is too late for this one.’

‘Good,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘That’s something.’

‘This storm comes from the Cantabrico,’ Pablo said. ‘It comes
from the sea. With the wind in this direction there will be a great
storm and much snow.’

‘Where did you learn all this, old timer?’ Robert Jordan asked.

Now that his rage was gone he was excited by this storm as he

175

was always by all storms. In a blizzard, a gale, a sudden line
squall, a tropical storm, or a summer thunder shower in the
mountains there was an excitement that came to him from no
other thing. It was like the excitement of batde except that it was
clean- There is a wind that blows through* battle but that was a
hot wind; hot and dry as your mouth; and it blew heavily; hot
and dirtily; and it rose and died away with the fortunes of the
day. He knew that wind well.

But a snowstorm was the opposite of all of that. In the snow-
storm you came close to wild animals and they were not afraid.
They travelled across country not knowing where they were and
the deer stood sometimes in the lee of the cabin. In a snowstorm
you rode up to a moose and he mistook your horse for another
moose and trotted forward to meet you. In a snowstorm it always
seemed, for a time, as though there were no enemies. In a snow-
storm the wind could blow a gale; but it blew a white cleanness
and the air was full of a driving whiteness and all things were
changed and when the wind stopped there would be the stillness.
This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining
everything, but you might as well enjoy it.

‘I was an arroyero for many years/ Pablo said. c We trucked
freight across the mountains with the big carts before the camions
came into use. In that business we learned the weather.’

"And how did you get into the movement?’

‘I was always of the left,’ Pablo said. ‘We had many contacts
with the people of Asturias where they are much developed
politically. I have always been for the Republic.’

‘But what were you doing before the movement?’

‘I worked then for a horse contractor of Zaragoza. He furnished
horses for the bull-rings as well as remounts for the army. It was
then that I met Pilar who was, as she told you, with the matador
Finito de Palencia.’

He said this with considerable pride.

‘He wasn’t much of a matador,’ one of the brothers at the table
said, looking at Pilar’s back where she stood in front of the stove.

‘No?* Pilar said, turning around and looking at the man, ‘He
wasn’t much of a matador ? ’

Standing there now in the cave by the cooking fire she could
see him, short and brown and sober-faced, with the sad eyes, the
cheeks sunken, and the black hair curled wet on his forehead

176

where the tight-fitting matador’s hat had made a red line that no
one else noticed. She saw him stand, now, facing the five-year-old
bull, facing the horns that had lifted the horses high, the great
neck thrusting the horse up, up, as the rider poked into that neck
with the spiked pole, thrusting up and up until the horse went
over with a crash and the rider fell against the wooden fence and,
with the bull’s legs thrusting him forward, the big neck swung
the horns that searched the horse for the life that was in him. She
saw him, Finite, the not-so-good matador, now standing in front
of the bull and turning sideways toward him. She saw him now
clearly as he furled the heavy flannel cloth around the stick; the
flannel hanging blood-heavy from the passes where it had swept
over the bull’s head and shoulders and the wet streaming shine of
his withers and on down and over his back as the bull raised into
the air and the banderillas clattered. She saw Finite stand five
paces from the bull’s head, profiled, the bull standing still and
heavy, and draw the sword slowly up until it was level with his
shoulder and then sight along the dipping blade at a point he
could not yet see because the bull’s head was higher than his eyes.
He would bring that head down with the sweep his left arm
would make with the wet, heavy cloth; but now he rocked back a
little on his heels and sighted along the blade, profiled in front of
the splintered horn; the bull’s chest heaving and his eyes watch-
ing the cloth.

She saw him very clearly now and she heard his thin, clear voice
as he turned his head and looked toward the people in the first
row of the ring above the red fence and said, ‘Let’s see if we can
kill him like this 1*

She could hear the voice and then see the first bend of the knee
as he started forward and watch his voyage in on to the horn that
lowered now magically as the bull’s muzzle followed the low-
swept cloth, the thin, brown wrist controlled, sweeping the horns
down and past, as the sword entered the dusty height of the
withers.

She saw its brightness going in slowly and steadily as though '
the bull’s rush plucked it into himself and out from the man’s
hand and she watched it move in until the brown knuckles rested
against the taut hide and the short, brown man whose eyes had
never left the entry place of the sword now swung his sucked-in
belly clear of the horn and rocked clear from the animal, to stand
177

holding the cloth on the stick in his left hand, raising his right
hand to watch the bull die.

She saw him standing, his eyes watching the bull trying to hold
the ground, watching the bull sway like a tree before it falls,
watching the bull fight to hold his feet to the earth, the short
man’s hand raised in a formal gesture of triumph. She saw him
standing there in the sweated, hollow relief of it being over, feel-
ing the relief that the bull was dying, feeling the relief that there
had been no shock, no blow of the horn as he came clear from it
and then, as he stood, the bull could hold to the earth no longer
and crashed over, rolling dead with all four feet in the air, and she
could see the short, brown man walking tired and unsmiling to
the fence.

She knew he could not run across the ring if his life depended
on it and she watched him walk slowly to the fence and wipe his
mouth on a towel and look up at her and shake his head and then
wipe his face on the towel and start his triumphant circling of the
ring.

She saw him moving slowly, dragging around the ring, smil-
ing, bowing, smiling, his assistants walking behind him, stoop-
ing, picking up cigars, tossing back hats; he circling the ring sad-
eyed and smiling, to end the circle before her. Then she looked
over and saw him sitting now on the step of the wooden fence,
his mouth in a towel.

Pilar saw all this as she stood there over the fire and she said,
‘So he wasn’t a good matador? With what class of people is my
life passed now ! ’

‘He was a good matador,’ Pablo said. ‘He was handicapped by
his short stature.’

‘And clearly he was tubercular,’ Primitivo said.

‘Tubercular?’ Pilar said. ‘Who wouldn’t be tubercular from the
punishment he received? In this country where no poor man can
ever hope to make money unless he is criminal like Juan March,
or a bullfighter, or a tenor in the opera? Why wouldn’t he be
tubercular? In a country where the bourgeoisie over-eat so that
their stomachs are all ruined and they cannot live without bi-
carbonate of soda and the poor are hungry from their birth till the
day they die, why wouldn’t he be tubercular? If you travelled
under the seats in third-class carriages to ride free when you were
following the fairs learning to fight as a boy, down there in the

178

dust and dirt with the fresh spit and the dry spit, wouldn’t you be
tubercular if your chest was beaten out by horns?’

‘Clearly,’ Primitivo said. ‘I only said he was tubercular.’

‘Of course he was tubercular,’ Pilar said, standing there with
the big wooden stirring spoon in her hand. ‘He was short of
stature and he had a thin voice and much fear of bulls. Never have
I seen a man with more fear before the bullfight and never have
I seen a man with less fear in the ring. You,’ she said to Pablo.
‘You are afraid to die now. You think that is something of im-
portance. But Finito was afraid all the time and in the ring he was
like a lion.’

‘He had the fame of being very valiant,’ the second brother
said.

‘Never have I known a man with so much fear,’ Pilar said. ‘He
would not even have a bull’s head in the house. One time at
the Feria of Valladolid he killed a bull of Pablo Romero very
well -’

‘I remember,’ the first brother said. ‘I was at the ring. It was a
soap-coloured one with a curly forehead and with very high
horns. It was a bull of over thirty arrobas. It was the last bull he
killed in Valladolid.’

‘Exactly,’ Pilar said. ‘And afterwards the club of enthusiasts
who met in the Cafe Colon and had taken his name for their club
had the head of the bull mounted and presented it to him at a
small banquet at the Cafe Colon. During the meal they had the
head on the wall, but it was covered with a cloth. I was at the table
and others were there, Pastora, who is uglier than I am, and the
Nina de los Pienes, and other gipsies and whores of great cate-
gory. It was a banquet, small but of great intensity and almost of
a violence due to a dispute between Pastora and one of the most
significant whores over a question of propriety. I, myself, was
feeling more than happy and I was sitting by Finito and I noticed
he would not look up at the bull’s head, which was shrouded in a
purple cloth as the images of the saints are covered in church
during the week of the passion of our former Lord.

‘Finito did not eat much because he had received a palotazo , a
blow from the flat of the horn when he had gone in to kill in his
last corrida of the year at Zaragoza, and it had rendered him un-
conscious for some time and even now he could not hold food on
his stomach and he would put his handkerchief to his mouth and
179

deposit a quantity o£ blood in it at intervals throughout the ban-
quet. What was I going to tell you?’

‘The bull’s head,’ Primitive said. ‘The stuffed head of the bull.’

‘Yes/ Pilar said. ‘Yes. But I must tell certain details so that you
will see it. Finito was never very merry, you know. He was essen-
tially solemn and I had never known him when we were alone to
laugh at anything. Not even at things which were very comic. He
took everything with great seriousness. He was almost as serious
as Fernando. But this was a banquet given him by a club of
aficionados banded together into the Club Finito and it was neces-
sary for him to give an appearance of gaiety and friendliness and
merriment. So all during the meal he smiled and made friendly
remarks and it was only I who noticed what he was doing with
the handkerchief. He had three handkerchiefs with him and he
filled the three of them and then he said to me in a very low
voice, “Pilar, I can support this no further. I think I must
leave.”

* “Let us leave then,” I said. For I saw he was suffering much.
There was great hilarity by this time at the banquet and the noise
was tremendous.

* “No. I cannot leave,” Finito said to me. “After all it is a club
named for me and I have an obligation.”

‘ “If thou art ill let us go,” I said.

* “Nay,” he said. “I will stay. Give me some of that man-
zanilla.”

‘I did not think it was wise of him to drink, since he had eaten
nothing, and since he had such a condition of the stomach; but he
was evidently unable to support the merriment and the hilarity
and the noise longer without taking something. So I watched him
drink, very rapidly, almost a botde of the manzanilla. Having ex-
hausted his handkerchiefs he was now employing his napkin for
the use he had previously made of his handkerchiefs.

‘Now indeed the banquet had reached a stage of great en-
thusiasm and some of the least heavy of the whores were being
paraded around the table on the shoulders of various of the club
members. Pastora was prevailed upon to sing and El Nino
Ricardo played the guitar and it was very moving and an occa-
sion of true joy and drunken friendship of the highest order.
Never have I seen a banquet at which a higher pitch of real
flamenco enthusiasm was reached and yet we had not arrived at

180

the unveiling o£ the bull’s head which was, after all, the reason
for the celebration of the banquet.

*1 was enjoying myself to such an extent and I was so busy clap-
ping my hands to the playing of Ricardo and aiding to make up
a team to clap for the singing of the Nina de los Peines that I did
not notice that Finite had filled his own napkin by now, and that
he had taken mine. He was drinking more manzanilla now and
his eyes were very bright and he was nodding very happily to
everyone. He could not speak much because at any time, while
speaking, he might have to resort to his napkin; but he was giving
an appearance of great gaiety and enjoyment which, after all, was
what he was there for.

‘So the banquet proceeded and the man who sat next to me had
been the former manager of Rafael el Gallo and he was telling me
a story, and the end of it was, “So Rafael came to me and said,
‘You are the best friend I have in the world and the noblest. I
love you like a brother and I wish to make you a present/ So then
he gave me a beautiful diamond scarf-pin and kissed me on both
cheeks and we were both very moved. Then Rafael el Gallo, hav-
ing given me the diamond scarf-pin, walked out of the cafe and I
said to Retana who was sitting at the table, ‘That dirty gipsy had
just signed a contract with another manager/ ”

‘ “ ‘What do you mean?’ Retana asked/*

* “I’ve managed him for ten years and he has never given me
a present before,” the manager of El Gallo had said. “That’s the
only thing it can mean.” And sure enough it was true and that
was how El Gallo left him.

‘But at this point, Pastora intervened in the conversation, not
perhaps as much to defend the good name of Rafael, since no one
had ever spoken harder against him than she had herself, but
because the manager had spoken against the gipsies by employing
the phrase, “Dirty gipsy”. She intervened so forcibly and in such
terms that the manager was reduced to silence. I intervened to
quiet Pastora and another Gitana intervened to quiet me and the
din was such that no one could distinguish any words which
passed except the one great word whore which roared out above
all other words until quiet was restored and the three of us who
had intervened sat looking down into our glasses and then I
noticed that Finito was staring at the bull’s head, still draped in
the purple cloth, with a look of horror on his face.

181

‘At this moment the president o£ the Club commenced the
speech which was to precede the unveiling of the head and all
through the speech which was applauded with shouts of “/ Ole!”
* and poundings on the table I was watching Finito who was
making use of his, no, my, napkin, and sinking farther back in
his chair and staring with horror and fascination at the shrouded
bull’s head on the wall opposite him.

‘Toward the end of the speech, Finito began to shake his head
and he got farther back in the chair all the time.

‘ “How are you, little one?” I said to him but when he looked
at me he did not recognize me and he only shook his head and
said, “No. No. No.”

‘So the president of the Club reached the end of the speech and
then, with everybody cheering him, he stood on a chair and
reached up and untied the cord that bound the purple shroud
over the head and slowly pulled it clear of the head and it stuck
on one of the horns and he lifted it clear and pulled it off the sharp
polished horns and there was that great yellow bull with black
horns that swung way out and pointed forward, their white tips
sharp as porcupine quills, and the head of the bull was as though
he were alive; his forehead was curly as in life and his nostrils
were open and his eyes were bright, and he was there looking
straight at Finito.

‘Everyone shouted and applauded and Finito sank farther back
in the chair and then everyone was quiet and looking at him and
he said, “No, No,” and looked at the bull and pulled farther back
and then he said, “No !” very loudly and a big blob of blood came
out and he didn’t even put up the napkin and it slid down his
chin and he was still looking at the bull and he said, “All season,
yes. To make money, yes. To eat, yes. But I can’t eat. Hear me?
My stomach’s bad. But now with the season finished ! No ! No !
No!” He looked around at the table and then he looked at the
bull’s head and said, “No,” once more and then he put his head
down and he put his napkin up to his mouth and then he just sat
there like that and said nothing and the banquet, which had
started so well, and promised to mark an epoch in hilarity and
good fellowship was not a success.”

‘Then how long after that did he die?’ Primitivo asked.

‘That winter,’ Pilar said. ‘He never recovered from that last
blow with the flat of the horn in Zaragoza. They are worse than
182

a goring, for the injury is internal and it does not heal. He re-
ceived one almost every time he went in to kill and it was for this
reason he was not more successful. It was difficult for him to get
out from over the horn because of his short stature. Nearly always
the side of the horn struck him. But of course many were only
glancing blows, 51

‘If be was so short be should not have tried to be a matador,’
Primitivo said.

Pilar looked at Robert Jordan and shook her head. Then she
bent over the big iron pot, still shaking her head.

What a people they are, she thought. What a people are the
Spaniards, and ‘if he was so short he should not have tried to be a
matador.’ And I hear it and say nothing. I have no rage for that
and having made an explanation I am silent. How simple it is
when one knows nothing. / Que sencillo / Knowing nothing one
says, ‘He was not much of a matador.’ Knowing nothing another
says, ‘He was tubercular.’ And another says, after one, knowing,
has explained, ‘If he was so short he should not have tried to be a
matador.’

Now, bending over the fire, she saw on the bed again the naked
brown body with the gnarled scars in both thighs, the deep, seared
whorl below the ribs on the right side of the chest, and the long
white welt along the side that ended in the armpit. She saw the
eyes closed and the solemn brown face and the curly black hair
pushed back now from the forehead and she was sitting by him
on the bed rubbing the legs, chafing the taut muscles of the calves,
kneading them, loosening them, and then tapping them lightly
with her folded hands, loosening the cramped muscles.

‘How is it?’ she said to him. ‘How are the legs, little one?’

‘Very well, Pilar,’ he would say without opening his eyes.

‘Do you want me to rub the chest?’

‘Nay, Pilar. Please do not touch it.’

‘And the upper legs ? ’

‘No. They hurt too badly.’

‘But if I rub them and put liniment on, it will warm them and
they will be better.’

‘Nay, Pilar. Thank thee. I would rather they were not
touched.’

‘I will wash thee with alcohol.’

‘Yes, Do it very lightly.’

‘You were enormous in the last bull, 5, she would say to him and
he would say, ‘Yes, I killed him very well/

Then, having washed him and covered him with a sheet, she
would lie by him in the bed and he would put a brown hand out
and touch her and say, ‘Thou art much woman, Pilar/ It was the
nearest to a joke he ever made and then, usually, after the fight,
he would go to sleep and she would lie there, holding his hand in
her two hands and listening to him breathe.

He was often frightened in his sleep and she would feel his
hand grip tightly and see the sweat bead on his forehead and if he
woke, she said, ‘It’s nothing/ and he slept again. She was with
him thus five years and never was unfaithful to him, that is almost
never, and then after the funeral, she took up with Pablo who led
picador horses in the ring and was like all the bulls that Finito
had spent his life killing. But neither bull force nor bull courage
lasted, she knew now, and what did last? I last, she thought. Yes,
I have lasted. But for what?

‘Maria/ she said. ‘Pay some attention to what you are doing.
That is a fire to cook with. Not to burn down a city/

Just then the gipsy came in the door. He was covered with snow
and he stood there holding his carbine and stamping the snow
from his feet.

Robert Jordan stood up and went over to the door. ‘Well?’ he
said to the gipsy.

‘Six-hour watches, two men at a time on the big bridge,’ the
gipsy said. ‘There are eight men and a corporal at the road-
menders’ hut. Here is thy chronometer/

‘What about the sawmill post?’

‘The old man is there. He can watch that and the road both/

‘And the road?’ Robert Jordan asked.

‘The same movement as always/ the gipsy said. ‘Nothing out
of the usual. Several motor-cars.’

The gipsy looked cold, his dark face was drawn with the cold
and his hands were red. Standing in the mouth of the cave he took
off his jacket and shook it.

‘I stayed until they changed the watch,’ he said. ‘It was changed
at noon and at six. That is a long watch. I am glad I am not in
their army/

‘Let us go for the old man/ Robert Jordan said, putting on his
leather coat.

184

‘Not me/ the gipsy said. ‘I go now for the fire and the hot soup*
I will tell one of these where he is and he can guide you. Hey,
loafers/ he called to the men who sat at the table. ‘Who wants to
guide the Ingles to where the old man is watching the road?*

‘I will go/ Fernando rose. ‘Tell me where it is/

‘Listen/ the gipsy said. ‘It is here — ’ and he told him where the
old man, Anselmo, was posted.

CHAPTER 15

Anselmo was crouched in the lee of the trunk of a big tree and
the snow blew past on either side. He was pressed close against
the tree and his hands were inside of the sleeves of his jacfcet, each
hand shoved up into the opposite sleeve, and his head was pulled
as far down into the jacket as it would go. If I stay here much
longer I will freeze, he thought, and that will be of no value. The
lnglSs told me to stay until I was relieved but he did not know
then about this storm. There has been no abnormal movement on
the road and I know the dispositions and the habits of this post at
the sawmill across the road. I should go now to the camp. Any-
body with sense would be expecting me to return to the camp. I
will stay a little longer, he thought, and then go to the camp. It is
the fault of the orders, which are too rigid. There is no allowance
for a change in circumstance. He rubbed his feet together and
then took his hands out of the jacket sleeves and bent over and
rubbed his legs with them and patted his feet together to keep the
circulation going. It was less cold there, out of the wind in the
shelter of the tree, but he would have to start walking shortly.

As he crouched, rubbing his feet, he heard a motor-car on the
road. It had on chains and one link of chain was slapping, and, as
he watched, it came up the snow-covered road, green and brown
painted, in broken patches of daubed colour, the windows blued
over so that you could not see in, with only a half circle left clear
in the blue for the occupants to look out through. It was a two-
year-old Rolls Royce town car camouflaged for the use o£ the
General Stall but Anselmo did not know that. He could not see
into the car where three officers sat wrapped in their capes. Two
were on the back seat and one sat on the folding chair. The officer
185

on the folding chair was looking out of the slit in the blue of the
window as the car passed but Anselmo did not know this. Neither
of them saw the other.

The car passed in the snow directly below him. Anselmo saw
the chauffeur, red-faced and steel-helmeted, his face and helmet
projecting out of the blanket cape he wore and he saw the for-
ward jut of the automatic rifle the orderly who sat beside the
chauffeur carried. Then the car was gone up the road and An-
selmo reached into the inside of his jacket and took out from his
shirt pocket the two sheets torn from Robert Jordan’s notebook
and made a mark after the drawing of a motor-car. It was the
tenth car up for the day. Six had come down. Four were still up.
It was not an unusual amount of cars to move upon that road but
Anselmo did not distinguish between the Fords, Fiats, Opels,
Renaults, and Citroens of the staff of the Division that held the
passes and the line of the mountain and the Rolls-Royces, Lancias,
Mercedes, and Isottas of the General Staff. This was the sort of
distinction that Robert Jordan should have made and, if he had
been there instead of the old man, he would have appreciated the
significance of these cars which had gone up. But he was not there
and the old man simply made a mark for a motor-car going up
the road, on the sheet of note paper.

Anselmo was now so cold that he decided he had best go to
camp before it was dark. He had no fear of missing the way, but
he thought it was useless to stay longer and the wind was blowing
colder all the time and there was no lessening of the snow. But
when he stood up and stamped his feet and looked through the
driving snow at the road he did not start off up the hillside but
stayed leaning against the sheltered side of the pine tree.

The IngUs told me to stay, he thought. Even now he may be on
the way here and, if I leave this place, he may lose himself in the
snow searching for me. All through this war we have suffered
from a lack of discipline and from the disobeying of orders and I
will wait a while still for the JnglSs. But if he does not come soon
I must go in spite of all orders for I have a report to make now,
and I have much to do in these days, and to freeze here is an exag-
geration and without utility.

Across the road at the sawmill smoke was coming out of the
chimney and Anselmo could smell it blown toward Mm through
the snow. The fascists are warm, he thought, and they are com-
1 86

fortable, and to-morrow night we will kill them. It is a strange
thing and I do not like to think of it. I have watched them all day
and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk
up to the mill and knock on the door and I -would be welcome
except that they have orders to challenge all travellers and ask to
see their papers. It is only orders that come between us. Those
men are not fascists. I call them so, but they are not. They are
poor men as we are. They should never be fighting against us and
I do not like to think of the killing.

These at this post are Gallegos. I know that from hearing them
talk this afternoon. They cannot desert because if they do their
families will be shot. Gallegos are either very intelligent or very
dumb and brutal. I have known both kinds. Lister is a Gallego
from the same town as Franco. I wonder what these Gallegos
think of this snow now at this time of year. They have no high
mountains such as these and in their country it always rains and
it is always green.

A light showed in the window of the sawmill and Anselmo
shivered and thought, damn that Ingles ! There are the Gallegos
warm and in a house here in our country, and I am freezing be-
hind a tree and we live in a hole in the rocks like beasts in the
mountain. But to-morrow, he thought, the beasts will come out
of their hole and these that are now so comfortable will die warm
in their blankets. As those died in the night when we raided
Otero, he thought. He did not like to remember Otero.

In Otero, that night, was when he first killed and he hoped he
would not have to kill in this of the suppressing of these posts. It
was in Otero that Pablo knifed the sentry when Anselmo pulled
the blanket over his head and the sentry caught Anselmo’s foot
and held it, smothered as he was in the blanket, and made a cry-
ing noise in the blanket and Anselmo had to feel in the blanket
and knife him until he let go of the foot and was still. He had his
knee across the man’s throat to keep him silent and he was knifing
into the bundle when Pablo tossed the bomb through the window
intQ the room where the men of the post were all sleeping. And
when the flash came it was as though the whole world burst red
and yellow before your eyes and two more bombs were in already.
Pablo had pulled the pins and tossed them quickly through the
window, and those who were not killed in their beds were killed
as they rose from bed when the second bomb exploded. That was

in the great days of Pablo when he scourged the country like a
tartar and no fascist post was safe at night.

And now, he is as finished and as ended as a boar that has been
altered, Anselmo thought, and, when the altering has been ac-
complished and the squealing is over you cast the two stones away
and the boar, that is a boar no longer, goes snouting and rooting
up to them and eats them. No, he is not that bad, Anselmo
grinned, one can think too badly even of Pablo. But he is ugly
enough and changed enough.

It is too cold, he thought. That the InglSs should come and that
I should not have to kill in this of the posts. These four Gallegos
and their corporal are for those who like the killing. The Ingles
said that. I will do it if it is my duty but the InglSs said that I would
be with him at the bridge and that this would be left to others. At
the bridge there will be a battle and, if I am able to endure the
batde, then I will have done all that an old man may do in this
war. But let the Ingles come now, for I am cold and to see the
light in the mill where I know that the Gallegos are warm makes
me colder still. I wish that I were in my own house again and that
this war were over. But you have no house now, he thought. We
must win this war before you can ever return to your house.

Inside the sawmill one of the soldiers was sitting on his bunk
and greasing his boots. Another lay in his bunk sleeping. The
third was cooking and the corporal was reading a paper. Their
helmets hung on nails driven into the wall and their rifles leaned
against the plank wall.

‘What kind of country is this where it snows when it is almost
June?’ the soldier who was sitting on the bunk said.

‘It is a phenomenon/ the corporal said.

‘We are in the moon of May/ the soldier who was cooking said.
‘The moon of May has not yet terminated.’

‘What kind of a country is it where it snows in May?’ the
soldier on the bunk insisted.

‘In May snow is no rarity in these mountains/ the corporal
said. ‘I have been colder in Madrid in May than in any other
month.*

‘And hotter, too/ the soldier who was cooking said.

‘May is a month of great contrasts in temperature/ the corporal
said. ‘Here, in Castile, May is a month of great heat but it can
have much cold.’

*

1 88

‘Or rain,’ the soldier on the bunk said. ‘In this past May it
rained almost every day.’

‘It did not/ the soldier who was cooking said. ‘And anyway
this past May was the moon of April.’

‘One could go crazy listening to thee and thy moons/ the cor-
poral said. ‘Leave this of the moons alone.’

‘Anyone who lives either by the sea or by the land knows that it
is the moon and not the month which counts/ the soldier who
was cooking said. ‘Now for example, we have just started the
moon of May. Yet it is coming on June.’

‘Why then do we not get definitely behind in the seasons?’ the
corporal said. ‘The whole proposition gives me a headache.’

‘You are from a town,’ the soldier who was cooking said. ‘You
are from Lugo. What would you know of the sea or of the
land?’

‘One learns more in a town than you analjabetos learn in thy
sea or thy land.*

‘In this moon the first of the big schools of sardines come/ the
soldier who was cooking said. ‘In this moon the sardine boats
will be outfitting and the mackerel will have gone north.’

‘Why are you not in the navy if you come from Noya?’ the
corporal asked.

‘Because I am not inscribed from Noya but from Negreira,
where I was born. And from Negreira which is up the river Tam-
bre, they take you for the army/

‘Worse luck/ said the corporal.

‘Do not think the navy is without peril/ the soldier who was
sitting on the bunk said. ‘Even without the possibility of combat
that is a dangerous coast in the winter.’

‘Nothing can be worse than the army/ the corporal said.

‘And you a corporal/ the soldier who was cooking said. ‘What
a way of speaking is that?’

‘Nay/ the corporal said. ‘I mean for dangers. I mean the en-
durance of bombardments, the necessity to attack, the life of the
parapet/

‘Here we have little of that/ the soldier on the bunk said.

‘By the Grace of God/ the corporal said. ‘But who knows when
we will be subject to it again? Certainly we will not have some-
thing as easy as this for ever !’

‘How much longer do you think we will have this detail?’

189

*1 don’t know/ the corporal said. ‘But I wish we could have it
for all the war/

‘Six hours is too long to be on guard/ the soldier who was cook-
ing said.

‘We will have three-hour watches as long as this storm holds/
the corporal said. ‘That is only normal.’

‘What about all those staff cars?’ the soldier on the bunk asked.
‘I did not like the look of all those staff cars.’

‘Nor 1/ the corporal said. ‘All such things are of evil omen.’

‘And aviation/ the soldier who was cooking said. ‘Aviation is
another bad sign.*

‘But we have formidable aviadon/ the corporal said. ‘The reds
have no aviation such as we have. Those planes this morning
were something to make any man happy/

‘I have seen the red planes when they were something serious/
the soldier on the bunk said. ‘I have seen those two-motor bombers
when they were a horror to endure/

‘Yes. But they are not as formidable as our aviation/ the cor-
poral said. ‘We have an aviation that is insuperable/

This was how they were talking in the sawmill while Anselmo
waited in the snow watching the road and the light in the sawmill
window.

I hope I am not for the killing, Anselmo was thinking. I think
that after the war there will have to be some great penance done
for the killing. If we no longer have religion after the war then I
think there must be some form of civic penance organized that all
may be cleansed from the killing or else we will never have a true
and human basis for living. The killing is necessary, I know, but
still the doing of it is very bad for a man and I think that, after all
this is over and we have won the war, there must be a penance of
some kind for the cleansing of us all.

Anselmo was a very good man and whenever he was alone
for long, and he was alone much of the time, this problem of the
killing returned to him.

I wonder about the Ingles , he thought. He told me that he did
not mind it. Yet he seems to be both sensitive and kind. It may be
that in the younger people it does not have an importance. It may
be that in foreigners, or in those who have not had our religion,
there is not the same attitude. But I think anyone doing it will be
190

brutalized in time and I think that, even though necessary, it is a
great sin and that afterwards we must do something very strong
to atone for it.

It was dark now and he looked at the light across the road and
shook his arms against his chest to warm them. Now, he thought,
he would certainly leave for the camp; but something kept him
there beside the tree above the road. It was snowing harder and
Anselmo thought : if only we could blow the bridge to-night. On
a night like this it would be nothing to take the posts and blow
the bridge and it would be all over and done with. On a night like
this you could do anything.

Then he stood there against the tree stamping his feet softly
and he did not think any more about the bridge. The coming of
the dark always made him feel lonely and to-night he -felt so
lonely that there was a hollowness in him as of hunger. In the
old days he could help this loneliness by the saying of prayers and
often coming home from hunting he would repeat a great num-
ber of the same prayer and it made him feel better. But he had not
prayed once since the movement. He missed the prayers but he
thought it would be unfair and hypocritical to say them and he
did not wish to ask any favours or for any different treatment than
all the men were receiving.

No, he thought, I am lonely. But so are all the soldiers and the
wives of all the soldiers and all those who have lost families or
parents. I have no wife, but I am glad that she died before the
movement. She would not have understood it. I have no children
and I never will have any children. I am lonely in the day when
I am not working but when the dark comes it is a time of great
loneliness. But one thing I have that no man nor any God can
take from me and that is that I have worked well for the Repub-
lic. I have worked hard for the good that we will all share later.
I have worked my best from the first of the movement and I have
done nothing that I am ashamed of.

All that I am sorry for is the killing. But surely there will be
an opportunity to atone for that because for a sin of that sort that
so many bear, certainly some just relief will be devised. I would
like to talk with the Ingles about it but, being young, he might
not understand. He mentioned the killing before. Or was it I that
mentioned it? He must have killed much, but he shows no signs
of liking it. In those who like it there is always a rottenness.

191

It must really be a great sin, he thought. Because certainly it is
the one thing we have no right to do even though, as I know it is
necessary. But in Spain it is done too lightly and often without
true necessity and there is much quick injustice which, after-
wards, can never be repaired. I wish I did not thuik about it so
much, he thought. I wish there were a penance for it that one
could commence now because it is the only thing that I have done
in all my life that makes me feel badly when I am alone. All the
other things are forgiven or one had a chance to atone for them
by kindness or in some decent way. But I think this of the killing
must be a very great sin and I would like to fix it up. Later on
there may be certain days that one can work for the State or some-
thing that one can do that will remove it. It will probably be
something that one pays as in the days of the Church he thought
and smiled. The Church was well organized for sin. That pleased
him and he was smiling in the dark when Robert Jordan came
up to him. He came silendy and the old man did not see him until

he was there. , _ . , , . ,

*Hola, viejo? Robert Jordan whispered and clapped him on the

back. ‘How’s the old one?’

‘Very cold/ Anselmo said. Fernando was standing a litde apart,
his back turned against the driving snow.

‘Come on/ Robert Jordan whispered. ‘Get on up to camp and
get warm. It was a crime to leave you here so long.

‘That is their light/ Anselmo pointed.

‘Where’s the sentry?’ ^

‘You do not see him from here. He is around the bend.

‘The hell with them/ Robert Jordan said. ‘You tell me at camp.

Come on, let’s go/

‘Let me show you/ Anselmo said.

‘I’m going to look at it in the morning/ Robert Jordan said.
‘Here, take a swallow of this.’

He handed the old man his flask. Anselmo tipped it up and
swallowed.

*Ayee? he said and rubbed his mouth. ‘It is fire.’

‘Come on/ Robert Jordan said in the dark. ‘Let us go.’

It was so dark now you could only see the flakes blowing past
and the rigid dark of the pine trunks. Fernando was standing a
little way up the hill. Look at that cigar-store Indian, Robert
Jordan thought. I suppose I have to offer him a drink.

192

‘Hey, Fernando,* he said as he came up to him. ‘A swallow?*

‘No,* said Fernando. ‘Thank you,’

Thank you, I mean, Robert Jordan thought. I’m glad cigar-
store Indians don’t drink. There isn’t too much of that left. Boy,
I’m glad to see this old man, Robert Jordan thought. He looked
at Anselmo and then clapped him on the back again as they started
up the hill.

‘I’m glad to see you, viejo,' he said to Anselmo. ‘If I ever get
gloomy, when I see you it cheers me up. Come on, let’s get up
there.’

They were going up the hill in the snow.

‘Back to the palace of Pablo,’ Robert Jordan said to Anselmo. It
sounded wonderful in Spanish.

‘j El Palacio del Miedo ,* Anselmo said .‘The Palace of Fear.’

‘La cueva de los huevos perdidos Robert Jordan capped the
other happily. ‘The cave of the lost eggs.’

‘What eggs?’ Fernando asked.

‘A joke,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Just a joke. Not eggs, you know.
The others.’

‘But why are they lost?’ Fernando asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘Take a book to tell you.
Ask Pilar,’ then he put his arm around Anselmo’s shoulder and
held hipi tight as they walked and shook him. ‘Listen,’ he said.
‘I’m glad to see you, hear? You don’t know what it means to find
somebody in this country in the same place they were left.’

It showed what confidence and intimacy he had that he could
say anything against the country.

‘I am glad to see thee,’ Anselmo said. ‘But I was just about to
leave.’

‘Like hell you would have,’ Robert Jordan said happily. ‘You’d
have frozen first.’

‘How was it up above?’ Anselmo asked.

‘Fine,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘Everything is fine.’

He was very happy with that sudden, rare happiness that can
come to anyone with a command in a revolutionary army; the
happiness of finding that even one of your flanks holds. If both
flanks ever held I suppose it would be too much to take, he
thought. I don’t know who is prepared to stand that. And if you
extend along a flank, any flank, it eventually becomes one man.
Yes, one man. This was not the axiom he wanted. But this was a

193

good man. One good man. You axe going to be the left flank when
we have the battle, he thought. I better not tell you that yet. It’s
going to be an awfully small battle, he thought But it’s going to
be an awfully good one. Well, I always wanted to fight one on my
own. I always had an opinion on what was wrong with every-
body else’s, from Agincourt down. I will have to make this a good
one. It is going to be small but very select If I have to do what I
think I will have to do it will be very select indeed.

‘Listen,’ he said to Anselmo. Tm awfully glad to see you.’

‘And me to see thee,’ the old man said.

As they went up the hill in the dark, the wind at their backs,
the storm blowing past them as they climbed, Anselmo did not
feel lonely. He had not been lonely since the IngUs had clapped
him on the shoulder. The Ingles was pleased and happy and they
joked together. The IngUs said it all went well and he was not
worried. The drink in his stomach warmed him and his feet were
warming, now climbing.

‘Not much on the road,’ he said to the IngUs .

‘Good,’ the Ingles told him. ‘You will show me when we get
there.’

Anselmo was happy now and he was very pleased that he had
stayed there at the post of observation.

If he had come into camp it would have been all right. It would
have been the intelligent and correct thing to have done under
the circumstances, Robert Jordan was thinking. But he stayed as
he was told, Robert Jordan thought. That’s the rarest thing that
can happen in Spain. To stay in a storm, in a way, corresponds to
a lot of things. It’s not for nothing that the Germans call an attack
a storm, I could certainly use a couple more who would stay. I
most certainly could. I wonder if that Fernando would stay. It’s
just possible. After all, he is the one who suggested coming out
just now. Do you suppose he would stay? Wouldn’t that be good?
He’s just about stubborn enough. I’ll have to make some in-
quiries. Wonder what the old cigar-store Indian is thinking about
now.

‘What are you thinking about, Fernando?’ Robert Jordan
asked.

6 Why do you ask ? ’

‘Curiosity,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘I am a man of great curiosity.’

‘I was thinking of supper/ Fernando said.

*94

‘Do you like to eat?*

‘Yes. Very much.’

‘How’s Pilar’s cooking?’

‘Average,’ Fernando answered.

He’s a second Coolidge, Robert Jordan thought. But, you know,
I have just a hunch that he would stay.

The three o£ them plodded up the hill in the snow.

CHAPTER 1 6

*El Sordo was here,’ Pilar said to Robert Jordan. They had
come in out of the storm to the smoky warmth of the cave and the
woman had motioned Robert Jordan over to her with a nod of
her head. ‘He’s gone to look for horses.’

‘Good. Did he leave any word for me?’

‘Only that he had gone for horses.’

‘And we?’

* No s6y she said. ‘Look at him.*

Robert Jordan had seen Pablo when he came in and Pablo had
grinned at him. Now he looked over at him sitting at the board
table and grinned and waved his hand.

‘ Ingles ,’ Pablo called. ‘It’s still falling, Ingles,’

Robert Jordan nodded at him.

‘Let me take thy shoes and dry them,’ Maria said. T will hang
there here in the smoke of the fire.’

‘Watch out you don’t burn them,’ Robert Jordan told her. ‘I
don’t want to go around here barefoot. What’s the matter?* he
turned to Pilar. ‘Is this a meeting? Haven’t you any sentries out?’

‘In this storm? Que va’

There were six men sitting at the table and leaning back against
the wall. Anselmo and Fernando were still shaking the snow from
their jackets, beating their trousers, and rapping their feet against
the wall by the entrance.

‘Let me take thy jacket,’ Maria said. ‘Do not let the snow melt
on it,’

Robert Jordan slipped out of his jacket, beat the snow from Ms
trousers, and untied his shoes.

‘You will get everything wet here,’ Pilar said.

195

‘It was thee who called me.’

‘Still there is no impediment to returning to the door for thy
brushing.’

‘Excuse me,’ Robert Jordan said, standing in his bare feet on
the dirty floor. ‘Hunt me a pair of socks, Maria.’

‘The Lord and Master,’ Pilar said and poked a piece of wood
into the fire.

‘Hay que aprovechar el tiempo ,’ Robert Jordan told her. ‘You
have to take advantage of what time there is.*

‘It is locked,’ Maria said.

‘Here is the key,’ and he tossed it over.

‘It docs not fit this sack.’

‘It is the other sack. They’re on top and at the side.*

The girl found the pair of socks, closed the sack, locked it, and
brought them over with the key.

‘Sit down and put them on and rub thy feet well,’ she said.
Robert Jordan grinned at her.

‘Thou canst not dry them with thy hair?’ he said for Pilar to
hear.

‘What a swine,’ she said. ‘First he is the Lord of the Manor.
Now he is our ex-Lord Himself. Hit him with a chunk of wood,
Maria.’

‘Nay,’ Robert Jordan said to her. ‘I am joking because I am
happy.’

‘You are happy?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think everything goes very well.’

‘Roberto,’ Maria said. ‘Go sit down and dry thy feet and let me
bring thee something to drink to warm thee.’

‘You would think that man had never dampened foot before,’
Pilar said. ‘Nor that a flake of snow had ever fallen.’

Maria brought him a sheepskin and put it on the dirt floor of
the cave.

‘There,’ she said. ‘Keep that under thee until thy shoes are dry.’
The sheepskin was fresh dried and not tanned and as Robert
Jordan rested his stockinged feet on it he could feel it crackle like
parchment.

The fire was smoking and Pilar called to Maria, ‘Blow up the
fire, worthless one. This is no smokehouse.’

‘Blow it thyself,’ Maria said. ‘I am searching for the bottle that
El Sordo left.’

‘It is behind his packs/ Pilar told her. ‘Must you care for him
as a sucking child ?’

‘No/ Maria said. ‘As a man who is cold and wet. And a man
.who has just come to his house. Here it is.’ She brought the bottle
to where Robert Jordan sat. ‘It is the bottle of this noon. With this
bottle one could make a beautiful lamp. When w T e have electricity
again, what a lamp we can make of this bottle.’ She looked at the
pinch-bottle admiringly. ‘How do you take this, Roberto?’

‘I thought I was Ingles / Robert Jordan said to her.

‘I call thee Roberto before the others/ she said in a low* voice
and blushed. ‘How do you want it, Roberto?’

‘Roberto/ Pablo said thickly and nodded his head at Robert
Jordan. ‘How do you want it, Don Roberto?’

‘Do you want some?’ Robert Jordan asked him.

Pablo shook his head. ‘I am making myself drunk with wine,’
he said with dignity.

‘Go with Bacchus/ Robert Jordan said in Spanish.

‘Who is Bacchus?* Pablo asked.

‘A comrade of thine/ Robert Jordan said.

‘Never have I heard of him/ Pablo said heavily. ‘Never in these
mountains.’

‘Give a cup to Anselmo/ Robert Jordan said to Maria. ‘It is he
who is cold.’ He was putting on the dry pair of socks, and the
whisky and water in the cup tasted clean and thinly warming.
But it does not curl around inside of you the way the absinthe
does, he thought. There is nothing like absinthe.

Who would imagine they would have whisky up here, he
thought. But La Granja was the most likely place in Spain to find
it when you thought it over. Imagine Sordo getting a bottle for
the visiting dynamiter and then remembering to bring it down
and leave it. It wasn’t just manners that they had. Manners would
have been producing the bottle and having a formal drink. That
was what the French would have done and then they would have
saved what was left for another occasion. No, the true thought-
fulness of thinking the visitor would like it and then bringing it
down for him to enjoy when you yourself were engaged in some-
thing where there was every reason to think of no one else but
yourself and of. nothing but the matter in hand — that was Span-
ish. One kind of Spanish, he thought. Remembering to bring the
whisky was one of the reasons you loved these people. Don’t go

197

romanticizing them, he thought. There are as many sorts of
Spanish as there are Americans. But still, bringing the whisky
was very handsome.

‘How do you like it ? 9 he asked Anselmo.

The old man was sitting by the fire with a smile on his face, his
big hands holding the cup. He shook his head.

‘No ? 9 Robert Jordan asked him.

‘The child put water in it,’ Anselmo said.

‘Exactly as Roberto takes it/ Maria said. ‘Art thou something
special?’

‘No/ Anselmo told her. ‘Nothing special at all. But I like to feel
it burn as it goes down.’

‘Give me that/ Robert Jordan told the girl, ‘and pour him some
of that which burns.’

He tipped the contents of the cup into his own and handed it
back empty to the girl, who poured carefully into it from the
bottle.

‘Ah/ Anselmo took the cup, put his head back, and let it run
down his throat. He looked at Maria standing holding the botde
and winked at her, tears coming from both his eyes. ‘That/ he
said. ‘That.’ Then he licked his lips. ‘ That is what kills the worm
that haunts us.’

‘Roberto/ Maria said and came over to him, still holding the
bottle. ‘Are you ready to eat ? 9

‘Is it ready?’

‘It is ready when you wish it/

‘Have the others eaten?’

‘All except you, Anselmo, and Fernando.’

‘Let us eat then/ he told her. ‘And thou?’

‘Afterwards with Pilar.’

‘Eat now with us.’

‘No. It would not be well/

‘Come on and eat. In my country a man does not eat before his
woman/

‘That is thy country. Here it is better to eat after/

‘Eat with him/ Pablo said, looking up from the table. ‘Eat
with him. Drink with him. Sleep with him. Die with him. Follow
the customs of his country/

‘Are you drunk?’ Robert Jordan said, standing in front of
Pablo. The dirty, stubble-faced man looked at him happily.

198

‘Yes,’ Pablo said. ‘Where is thy country, Ingles, where the
women eat with the men?’

‘In Estados Unidos in the state of Montana.’

‘Is it there that the men wear skirts as do the women ? *

‘No. That is in Scotland.*

‘But listen,’ Pablo said. ‘When you wear skirts like that,
Ingles — *

‘I don’t wear them,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘When you are wearing those skirts,’ Pablo went on, ‘what do
you wear under them?’

‘I don’t know what the Scotch wear,’ Robert Jordan said, ‘I’ve
wondered myself.’

‘Not the Escoceses ,’ Pablo said. ‘Who cares about the Escoceses ?
Who cares about anything with a name as rare as that? Not me.
I don’t care. You, I say, Ingles. You. What do you wear under
your skirts in your country?*

‘Twice I have told you that we do not wear skirts,’ Robert
Jordan said. ‘Neither drunk nor in joke.’

‘But under your skirts,’ Pablo insisted. ‘Since it is well known
that you wear skirts. Even the soldiers. I have seen photographs
and also I have seen them in the Circus of Price. What do you
wear under your skirts, InglSsV

‘ Los cojones Robert Jordan said.

Anselmo laughed and so did the others who were listening; ail
except Fernando. The sound of the word, of the gross word
spoken before the women, was offensive to him. *

‘Well, that is normal,’ Pablo said. ‘But it seems to me that with
enough cojones you would not wear skirts.’

‘Don’t let him get started again, Ingles , 1 the flat-faced man with
the broken nose who was called Primitivo said. ‘He is drunk. Tell
me, what do they raise in your country?’

‘Cattle and sheep,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Much grain also and
beans. And also much beets for sugar.’

The three were at the table now and the others sat close by
except Pablo, who sat by himself in front of a bowl of the wine. It
was the same stew as the night before and Robert Jordan ate it
hungrily.

‘In your country there are mountains? With that name surely
there are mountains,’ Primitivo asked politely to make conversa-
tion. He was embarrassed at the drunkenness of Pablo.

199

‘Many mountains and very high.*

‘And are there good pastures ? *

‘Excellent; high pasture in the summer in forests controlled by
the government. Then in the fall the cattle are brought down to
the lower ranges.’

‘Is the land there owned by the peasants ?’

‘Most land is owned by those who farm it. Originally the land
was owned by the State and by living on it and declaring the in-
tention of improving it, a man could obtain title to a hundred and
fifty hectares.’

‘Tell me how this is done,’ Agustm asked. That is an agrarian
reform which means something.’

Robert Jordan explained the process of homesteading. He had
never thought of it before as an agrarian reform.

‘That is magnificent,* Primitivo said. ‘Then you have a com-
munism in your country?’

‘No. That is done under the Republic.’

‘For me,’ Agusdn said, ‘everything can be done under the Re-
public. I see no need for other form of government.’

‘Do you have no big proprietors?’ Andres asked.

‘Many.’

‘Then there must be abuses.’

‘Certainly. There are many abuses.’

‘Rut you will do away with them ? ’

‘We try to more and more. But there are many abuses still’

‘But there are not great estates that must be broken up?’

‘Yes. But there are those who believe that taxes will break them
up.’

‘How?’

Robert Jordan, wiping out the stew bowl with bread, explained
how the income tax and inheritance tax worked. ‘But the big
estates remain. Also there are taxes on the land,’ he said.

‘But surely the big proprietors and the rich will make a revolu-
tion against such taxes. Such taxes appear to me to be revolu-
tionary. They will revolt against the government when they see
that they are threatened, exaedy as the fascists have done here,*
Primitivo said.

‘It is possible.’

‘Then you will have to fight in your country as we fight here.’

‘ Y es, we will have to fight. ’

200

‘But are there not many fascists in your country?’

‘There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find
it out when the time comes/

‘But you cannot destroy them until they rebel ? *

‘No/ Robert Jordan said. ‘We cannot destroy them. But we can
educate the people so that they will fear fascism and recognize it
as it appears and combat it/

‘Do you know where there are no fascists?* Andres asked.

‘Where?*

‘In the town of Pablo/ Andres said and grinned.

‘You know what was done in that village?* Primitivo asked
Robert Jordan.

‘Yes.*I have heard the story/

‘From Pilar?*

‘Yes/

‘You could not hear all of it from the woman/ Pablo said
heavily. ‘Because she did not see the end of it because she fell from
a chair outside of the window/

‘You tell him what happened then/ Pilar said. ‘Since I know
not the story, let you tell it/

‘Nay/ Pablo said. ‘I have never told it/

‘No/ Pilar said. ‘And you will not tell it. And now you wish it
had not happened/

‘No/ Pablo said. ‘That is not true. And if all had killed the
fascists as I did we would not have this war. But I would not have
had it happen as it happened/

‘Why do you say that?* Primitivo asked him. ‘Are you chang-
ing your politics? *

‘No. But it was barbarous/ Pablo said. ‘In those days I was
very .barbarous. *

‘And now you are drunk/ Pilar said.

‘Yes/ Pablo said. ‘With your permission/

‘I liked you better when you were barbarous/ the woman said.
‘Of all men the drunkard is the foulest. The thief when he is not
stealing is like another. The extortioner does not practise in the
home. The murderer when he is at home can wash his hands. But
the drunkard stinks and vomits in his own bed and dissolves his
organs in alcohol/

‘You are a woman and you do not understand/ Pablo said
equably. ‘I am drunk on wine and I would be happy except for
201

those people I have killed. All of them fill me with sorrow.’ He
shook his head lugubriously.

‘Give him some of that which Sordo brought,’ Pilar said. ‘Give
him something to animate him. He is becoming too sad to bear.’

‘If I could restore them to life, I would,’ Pablo said.

‘Go and obscenity thyself,’ Agustln said to him. ‘What sort of
place is this?’

‘I would bring them all back to life,’ Pablo said sadly. ‘Every
one.*

‘Thy mother,’ Agustm shouted at him. ‘Stop talking like this
or get out. Those were fascists you killed.’

‘You heard me,’ Pablo said. ‘I would restore them all to life.’

‘And then you would walk on the water,’ Pilar said. ‘In my life
I have never seen such a man. Up until yesterday you preserved
some remnants of manhood. And to-day there is not enough of
you left to make a sick kitten. Yet you are happy in your sodden-
ness.’

‘We should have killed all or none,’ Pablo nodded his head.
‘All or none.’

‘Listen, Ingles ,’ Agustm said. ‘How did you happen to come to
Spain? Pay no attention to Pablo. He is drunk.’

‘I came first twelve years ago to study the country and the lan-
guage,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘I teach Spanish in a university,’

‘You look very like a professor,’ Primitivo said.

‘He has no beard,’ Pablo said. ‘Look at him. He has no beard.’

‘Are you truly a professor?’

‘An instructor.’

‘Rut you teach?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why Spanish?’ Andres asked. ‘Would it not be easier to
teach English since you are English?’

‘He speaks Spanish as we do,’ Anselmo said. ‘Why should he
not teach Spanish?’

‘Yes. But it is, in a way, presumptuous for a foreigner to teach
Spanish,’ Fernando said. ‘I mean nothing against you, Don
Roberto.’

‘He’s a false professor,’ Pablo said, very pleased with himself.
‘He hasn’t got a beard.’

‘Surely you know English better,’ Fernando said. ‘Would it
not be better and easier and clearer to teach English?’

202

‘He doesn’t teach it to Spaniards Pilar started to intervene.

‘I should hope not,’ Fernando said.

‘Let me finish, you mule,’ Pilar said to him. ‘He teaches Spanish
to Americans. North Americans.*

‘Can they not speak Spanish? * Fernando asked. ‘South Ameri-
cans can.*

‘Mule, 5 Pilar said. ‘He teaches Spanish to North Americans
who speak English.*

‘Still and all I think it would be easier for him to teach English
if that is what he speaks,’ Fernando said.

‘Can’t you hear he speaks Spanish? * Pilar shook her head hope-
lessly at Robert Jordan.

‘Yes. But with an accent.*

‘Of where?* Robert Jordan asked.

‘Of Estremadura,’ Fernando said primly.

‘Oh my mother,* Pilar said. ‘What a people !*

‘It is possible,* Robert Jordan said. ‘I have come here from
there.*

‘As he well knows,* Pilar said. ‘You old maid,* she turned to
Fernando. ‘Have you had enough to eat?*

‘I could eat more if there is a sufficient quantity,’ Fetnando told
her. ‘And do not think that I wish to say anything against you,
Don Roberto — *

‘Milk,’ Agustin said simply. ‘And milk again. Do we make the
revolution in order to say Don Roberto to a comrade?*

‘For me the revolution is so that all will say Don to all,*
Fernando said. ‘Thus should it be under the Republic.*

‘Milk,* Agustin said. ‘Black milk.’

‘And I still think it would be easier and clearer for Don Roberto
to teach English.’

‘Don Roberto has no beard,’ Pablo said. ‘He is a false professor.*
‘What do you mean, I have no beard?’ Robert Jordan said,
‘What’s this?’ He stroked his chin and his cheeks where the three-
day growth made a blond stubble.

‘Not a beard,* Pablo said. He shook his head. ‘That’s not a
beard.* He was almost jovial now. ‘He’s a false professor.*

‘I obscenity in the milk of all,’ Agustin said, ‘if it does not seem
like a lunatic asylum here.’

‘You should drink,’ Pablo said to him. ‘To me everything ap-
pears normal. Except the lack of beard of Don Roberto.*

203

Maria ran her hand over Robert Jordan’s cheek.

‘He has a beard/ she said to Pablo.

‘You should know/ Pablo said and Robert Jordan looked at
him.

I don’t think he is so drunk, Robert Jordan thought. No, not so
drunk. And I think I had better watch myself.

‘Thou/ he said to Pablo. ‘Do you think this snow will last?’

‘What do you think?*

‘I asked you/

‘Ask another/ Pablo told him. ‘I am not thy service of informa-
tion. You have a paper from thy service of information. Ask the
woman. She commands/

‘I asked thee/

‘Go and obscenity thyself/ Pablo told him. ‘Thee and the
woman and the girl/

‘He is drunk/ Primitivo said. ‘Pay him no heed, Ingles /

‘I do not think he is so drunk/ Robert Jordan said.

Maria was standing behind him and Robert Jordan saw Pablo
watching her over his shoulder. The small eyes, like a boar’s,
were watching her out of the round, stubble-covered head and
Robert Jordan thought : I have known many killers in this war
and some before and they were all different; there is no common
trait nor feature; nor any such thing as the criminal type; but
Pablo is certainly not handsome.

‘I don’t believe you can drink/ he said to Pablo. ‘Nor that you’re
drunk.’

‘I am drunk/ Pablo said with dignity. ‘To drink is nothing. It
is to be drunk that is important. Estoy muy borracho /

‘I doubt it/ Robert Jordan told him. ‘Cowardly, yes/

It was so quiet in the cave, suddenly, that he could hear the
hissing noise the wood made burning on the hearth where Pilar
cooked. He heard the sheepskin crackle as he rested his weight on
his feet. He thought he could almost hear the snow falling out-
side. He could not, but he could hear the silence where it fell.

I’d like to kill him and have it over with, Robert Jordan was
thinking. I don’t know what he is going to do, but it is nothing
good. Day after to-morrow is the bridge and this man is bad and
he constitutes a danger to the success of the whole enterprise.
Come on. Let us get it over with.

Pablo grinned at him and put one finger up and wiped it across
204

his throat. He shook his head that turned only a little each way
on his thick, short neck.

‘Kav, Ingles’ he said. "Do not provoke me.’ He looked at Pilar
and said to her, "It is not thus that you get rid of me.’

4 Smverguenza Robert Jordan said to him, committed now in
his own mind to the action. * Cobarde

‘It is very possible,’ Pablo said. ‘But I am not to be provoked.
Take something to drink, Ingles , and signal to the woman it was
not successful.’

‘Shut thy mouth,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘I provoke thee for my-
self.’

‘It is not worth the trouble,’ Pablo told him. T do not provoke.’

‘Thou art a bicho raro Robert Jordan said, not 'wanting to let
it go; not wanting to have it fail for the second time; knowing as
he spoke that this had all been gone through before; having that
feeling that he was playing a part from memory of something
that he had read or had dreamed, feeling it all moving in a circle.

‘Very rare, yes,’ Pablo said. ‘Very rare and very drunk. To your
health, Ingles’ He dipped a cup in the wine bowl and held it up.
‘ Salud y cojones .’

He’s rare, all right, Robert Jordan thought, and smart, and very
complicated. He could no longer hear the fire for the sound of his
own breathing.

‘Here’s to you,’ Robert Jordan said, and dipped a cup into the
wine. Betrayal wouldn’t amount to anything without all these
pledges, he thought. Pledge up. 'Salud ,’ he said. ‘ Salud and
Salud again,’ you salud, he thought. Salud , you salud .

‘Don Roberto,’ Pablo said heavily.

‘Don Pablo,’ Robert Jordan said,

‘You’re no professor,’ Pablo said, ‘because you haven’t got a
beard. And also to do away with me you have to assassinate me
and, for this, you have not cojones

He was looking at Robert Jordan with his mouth closed so that
his lips made a tight line, like the mouth of a fish, Robert Jordan
thought. With that head it is like one of those porcupine fish that
swallow air and swell up after they are caught.

'Salud, Pablo,’ Robert Jordan said and raised the cup up and
drank from it. ‘I am learning much from thee.’

‘I am teaching the professor,’ Pablo nodded his head. ‘Come on,
Don Roberto, we will be friends.’

205

‘We are friends already/ Robert Jordan said.

“But now we will be good friends/

‘We are good friends already/

‘I’m going to get out of here/ Agustfn said. ‘Truly, it is said
that we must eat a ton of it in this life but I have twenty-five
pounds of it stuck in each of my ears this minute/

‘What is the matter, negro ?' Pablo said to him. ‘Do you not
like to see friendship between Don Roberto and me?’

‘Watch your mouth about calling me negro.’ Agustfn went
over to him and stood in front of Pablo holding his hands low.
‘So you are called/ Pablo said.

‘Not by thee/

‘Well, then, bianco - 9
‘Nor that, either/

‘What are you then, red ? 9

‘Yes. Red. Rojo. With the red star of the army and in favour
of the Republic. And my name is Agustfn/

‘W T hat a patriotic man/ Pablo said. ‘Look, Ingles , what an ex-
emplary patriot/

Agustfn hit him hard across the mouth with his left hand,
bringing it forward in a slapping, backhand sweep. Pablo sat
there. The corners of his mouth were wine-stained and his ex-
pression did not change, but Robert Jordan watched his eyes
narrow", as a cat’s pupils close to vertical slits in a strong light.

‘Nor this/ Pablo said. ‘Do not count on this, woman/ He
turned his head toward Pilar. ‘I am not provoked/

Agustfn hit him again. This time he hit him on the mouth with
his closed fist. Robert Jordan was holding his pistol in his hand
under the table. He had shoved the safety catch off and he pushed
Maria away with his left hand. She moved a Iitde way and he
pushed her hard in the ribs with his left hand again to make her
get really away. She was gone now and he saw her from the
corner of his eye, slipping along the side of the cave toward the
fire, and now Robert Jordan watched Pablo’s face.

The round-headed man sat staring at Agustfn from his flat little
eyes. The pupils were even smaller now. He licked his lips, then
put up an arm and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand,
looked down and saw the blood on his hand. He ran his tongue
over his lips, then spat.

‘Nor that , 9 he said. ‘I am not a fool. I do not provoke/

206

‘ Cabron / Agustin said.

‘You should know,’ Pablo said. ‘You know the woman.’

Agustin hit him again hard in the mouth and Pablo laughed at
him, showing the yellow, bad, broken teeth in the reddened line
of his mouth.

‘Leave it alone,’ Pablo said and reached with a cup to scoop some
wane from the bowl. ‘Nobody here has co jones to kill me and this
of the hands is silly.’

‘ Cobarde / Agustin said.

‘Nor words either,’ Pablo said and made a swishing noise
rinsing the wine in his mouth. He spat on the floor. ‘I am far past
words.’

Agustin stood there looking down at him and cursed him,
speaking slowly, clearly, bitterly, and contemptuously and curs-
ing as steadily as though he were dumping manure on a Held ,
lifting it with a dung fork out of a wagon.

‘Nor of those,* Pablo said. ‘Leave it, Agustin. And do not' hit
me more. Thou wilt injure thy hands.’

Agustin turned from him and went to the door.

‘Do not go out,’ Pablo said. ‘It is snowing outside. Make thy-
self comfortable in here.*

‘And thou! Thou!’ Agustin turned from the door and spoke
to him, putting all his contempt in the single, ‘T#.’

‘Yes, me,’ said Pablo. ‘I will be alive when you are dead.’

He dipped up another cup of wine and raised it to Robert
Jordan. ‘To the professor,’ he said. Then turned to Pilar. ‘To the
Senora Commander.’ Then toasted them all, ‘To all the illusioned
ones.*

Agustin walked over to him and, striking quickly with the side
of his hand, knocked the cup out of his hand. *

‘That is a waste,’ Pablo said. ‘That is silly.’

Agustin said something vile to him.

‘No,’ Pablo said, dipping up another cup. ‘I am drunk, seest
thou? When I am drunk I do not talk. You have never heard me
talk much. But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be
drunk to spend his time with fools.’

‘Go and obscenity in the milk of thy cowardice/ Pilar said to
him. ‘I know too much about thee and thy cowardice.’

‘How the woman talks,’ Pablo said. ‘I will be going out to see
the horses/

207

‘Go and befoul them,’ Agustin said, ‘Is not that one of thy
customs?’

‘No, 9 Pablo said and shook his head. He was taking down his
big blanket cape from the wall and he looked at Agustin. ‘Thou,’
he said, ‘and thy violence,*

‘What do you go to do with the horses?* Agustin said.

‘Look to them,’ Pablo said.

‘Befoul them,* Agustin said. ‘Horse lover.*

‘I care for them very much,* Pablo said. ‘Even from behind they
are handsomer and have more sense than these people. Divert
yourselves,’ he said and grinned. ‘Speak to them of the bridge,
Ingles . Explain their duties in the attack. Tell them how to con-
duct the retreat. Where will you take them, Ingles , after the
bridge? Where will you take your patriots? I have thought of it
all day while I have been drinking.’

‘What have you thought?’ Agustin asked.

‘What have I thought?’ Pablo said and moved his tongue
around exploringly inside his lips. u Que te importa , what have I
thought.*

‘Say it,’ Agustin said to him.

‘Much,* Pablo said. He pulled the blanket coat over his head,
the roundness of his head protruding now from the dirty yellow
folds of the blanket. ‘I have thought much.’

‘What?’ Agustin said. ‘What?*

‘I have thought you are a group of illusioned people,’ Pablo
said. ‘Led by a woman with her brains between her thighs and a
foreigner who comes to destroy you.*

‘Get out,’ Pilar shouted at him. ‘Get out and fist yourself into
the snow. Take your bad milk out of here, you horse-exhausted
maricon * %

‘Thus one talks,* Agusdn said admiringly, but absent-mind-
edly. He was worried.

‘I go,’ said Pablo. ‘But I will be back shortly.’ He lifted the
blanket over the door of the cave and stepped out. Then from the
door he called, ‘It’s still falling, Ingl<?s.’

20 8

CHAPTER 17

The only noise in the cave now was the hissing from the hearth
where snow was falling through the hole in the roof on to the
coals of the fire.

‘Pilar,’ Fernando said. ‘Is there more of the stew?’

‘Oh, shut up,’ the woman said. But Maria took Fernando’s
bowl over to the big pot set back from the edge of the fire and
ladled into it. She brought it over to the table and set it down and
then patted Fernando on the shoulder as he bent to eat. She stood
for a moment beside him, her hand on his shoulder. But Fernando
did not look up. He was devoting himself to the stew.

Agusdn stood beside the fire. The others were seated. Pilar sat
at the table opposite Robert Jordan.

‘Now, Ingles / she said, ‘you have seen how he is.’

‘What will he do?’ Robert Jordan asked.

‘Anything,’ the woman looked down at the table. ‘Anything.
He is capable of doing anything.’

‘Where is the automatic rifle?’ Robert Jordan asked.

‘There in the corner wrapped in the blanket/ Primitivo said.
‘Do you want it?’

‘Later/ Robert Jordan said. T wished to know where it is/

it is there/ Primitivo said. ‘I brought it in and I have wrapped
it in my blanket to keep the action dry. The pans are in that sack/’

‘He would not do that/ Pilar said. ‘He would not do anything
with the m a quin a'

‘I thought you said he would do anything.’

‘He might/ she said. ‘But he has no practice with the mdquina .
He could toss in a bomb. That is more his style.’

‘It is an idiocy and a weakness not to have killed him/ th£ gipsy
said. He had taken no part in any of the talk all evening. ‘Last
night Roberto should have killed him/

‘Kill* him/ Pilar said. Her big face was dark and tired looking,
i am for it now.’

i was against it/ Agusdn said. He stood in front of the fire,
his long arms hanging by his sides, his cheeks, stubble-shadowed
' 209

below the cheekbones, hollow in the firelight. ‘Now I am for it,’
he said. 'He is poisonous now and he would like to see us all
destroyed,''

‘Let all speak,’ Pilar said and her voice was tired. ‘Thou,
Andres

‘ Matarlo, ’ the brother with the dark hair growing far down in
the point on his forehead said and nodded his head.

‘Eladior*

‘Equally,’ the other brother said. ‘To me he seems to constitute
a great danger. And he serves for nothing.’

‘Primitivo?’

‘Equally.’

‘Fernando?’

‘Could we not hold him as a prisoner?’ Fernando asked.

‘Who would look after a prisoner?’ Primitivo said. ‘It would
take two men to look after a prisoner and what would we do with
him in the end ? ’

‘We could sell him to the fascists,* the gipsy said.

‘None of that,’ Agustm said. ‘None of that filthiness.’

‘It was only an idea,’ Rafael, the gipsy, said. ‘It seems to me
that the facciosos would be happy to have him.’

‘Leave it alone/ Agustm said. ‘That is filthy.’

‘No filthier than Pablo/ the gipsy justified himself.

‘One filthiness does not justify another/ Agustin said. ‘Well,
that is all. Except for the old man and the Ingles’

. ‘They are not in it,’ Pilar said. ‘He has not been their leader.’

‘One moment/ Fernando said. ‘I have not finished.’

‘Go ahead,’ Pilar said. ‘Talk until he comes back: Talk until he
rolls a hand grenade under that blanket and blows this all up.
Dynamite and all.*

‘I think that you exaggerate, Pilar/ Fernando said. T do not
think that he has any such conception.’

‘I do not think so either,’ Agustin said. ‘Because that would
blow the wine up too and he will be back in’ a little while to the
wine/

‘Why not turn him over to El Sordo and let El Sordo sell him
to the fascists?’ Rafael suggested. ‘You could blind him and he
would be easy to handle/

‘Shut up/ Pilar said. ‘I feel something very justified against
thee too when thou talkest.*

210

‘The fascists would pay nothing for him anyway/ Primitivo
said- ‘Such things have been tried by others and they pay nothing.
They will shoot thee too.’

‘I believe that blinded he could be sold for something/ Rafael
said.

‘Shut up/ Pilar said. ‘Speak of blinding again and you can go
with the other/

‘But he, Pablo, blinded the guardia civil who was wounded/
the gipsy insisted. ‘You have forgotten that?’

‘Close thy mouth/ Pilar said to him. She was embarrassed be-
fore Robert Jordan by this talk of blinding.

‘I have not been allowed to finish/ Fernando interrupted.

‘Finish/ Pilar told him. ‘Go on. Finish.’

‘Since it is impractical to hold Pablo as a prisoner/ Fernando
commenced, ‘and since it is repugnant to offer him — *

‘Finish/ Pilar said. ‘For the love of God, finish/

in any class of negotiation/ Fernando proceeded calmly, ‘I
am agreed that it is perhaps best that he should be eliminated in
order that the operations projected should be insured of the
maximum possibility of success.’

Pilar looked at the little man, shook her head, bit her lips, and
said nothing.

‘That is my opinion/ Fernando said. T believe we are justified
in believing that he constitutes a danger to the Republic — 5

‘Mother of God/ Pilar said. ‘Even here one man can make a
bureaucracy with his mouth/

‘Both from his own words and his recent actions/ Fernando
continued. ‘And while he is deserving of gratitude for his actions
in the early part of the movement and up until the most recent
time—’

Pilar had walked over to the fire. Now she came up to the table.

‘Fernando/ Pilar said quietly and handed a bowl to him. ‘Take
this stew please in all formality and fill thy mouth with it and
talk no more. We are in possession of thy opinion/

‘But, how then — * Primitivo asked and paused without com-
pleting the sentence.

‘Estoy listo / Robert Jordan said, ‘I am ready to do it. Since you
are all decided that it should be done it is a service that I can do/

What’s the matter? he thought. From listening to him I am
beginning to talk like Fernando. That language must be in-

211

fectious. French, the language of diplomacy. Spanish, the lan-
guage of bureaucracy.

‘No,’ Maria said. ‘No/

‘This is none of thy business,’ Pilar said to the girl. ‘Keep they
mouth shut.’

‘I will do it to-night,’ Robert Jordan said.

He saw Pilar looking at him, her fingers on her lips. She was
looking toward the door.

The blanket fastened across the opening of the cave was lifted
and Pablo put his head in. He grinned at them all, pushed under
the blanket, and then turned and fastened it again. He turned
around and stood there, then pulled the blanket cape over his
head, and shook the snow from it.

‘You were speaking of me?’ he addressed them all. ‘I am in-
terrupting? ’

No one answered him and he hung the cape on a peg in the
wall and walked over to the table.

talT he asked, and picked up his cup which had stood
empty on the table and dipped it into the wine bowl. ‘There is no
wine,’ he said to Maria. ‘Go draw some from the skin.’

Maria picked up the bowl and went over to the dusty, heavily
distended, black-tarred wineskin that hung neck down from the
wall and unscrewed the plug from one of the legs enough so that
the wine squirted from the edge of the plug into the bowl. Pablo
watched her kneeling, holding the bowl up, and watched the
light red wine flooding into the bowl so fast that it made a whirl-
ing motion as it filled it.

‘Be careful,’ he said to her. ‘The wine’s below the chest now.’

No one said anything.

‘I drank from the belly-button to the chest to-day,’ Pablo said.
‘It’s a day’s work. What’s the matter with you all? Have you lost
your tongues?’

No one said anything at all.

‘Screw it up, Maria,’ Pablo said. ‘Don’t let it spill.’

‘There’ll be plenty of wine,’ Agusdn said. ‘You’ll be able to be
drunk.’

‘One has encountered his tongue,’ Pablo said and nodded to
Agusdn. ‘Felicitations. I thought you’d been struck d um b.*

‘By what? ’ Agusdn asked.

‘By my entry.’

2X2

‘Thinkest thou that thy entry carries importance?’

He’s working him. seif up to it, maybe, Robert Jordan thought.
Maybe Agustin is going to do it. He certainly hates him enough.
I don’t hate him, he thought. No, I don’t hate him. He is dis-
gusting but f do not hate him. Though that blinding business
puts him in a special class. Still this is their war. But he is certainly
nothing to have around for the next two days. I am going to keep
away out of it, he thought. I made a fool of myself with him once
to-night and I am perfectly willing to liquidate him. But I am not
going to fool with him beforehand. And there are not going to
be any shooting matches or monkey business in here with that
dynamite around either. Pablo thought of that, of course. And
did you think of it, he said to himself? No, you did not and
neither did Agustin. You deserve whatever happens to you, he
thought.

‘Agustin,’ he said.

‘What?’ Agustin looked up sullenly and turned his head away
from Pablo.

1 wish to speak to thee,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘Later.’

‘Now%’ Robert Jordan said. ‘ For favor *

Robert Jordan had walked to the opening of the cave and Pablo
followed him with his eyes. Agustm, tall and sunken cheeked,
stood up and came over to him. He moved reluctantly and con-
temptuously.

‘Thou hast forgotten what is in the sacks?’ Robert Jordan said
to him, speaking so low that it could not be heard.

‘Milk !’ Agustin said. ‘One becomes accustomed and one for-
gets.’

‘I, too, forgot.’

‘Milk!’ Agustfn said. ‘ jLeck / What fools we are.’ He swung
back loose-jointedly to the table and sat down. ‘Have a drink,
Pablo, old boy,’ he said. ‘How were the horses?*

‘Very good,’ Pablo said. ‘And it is snowing less.’

‘Do you think it will stop ?’

‘Yes,* Pablo said. ‘It is thinning now and there are small, hard
pellets. The wind will blow but the snow is going. The wind has
changed.*

‘Do you think it will clear to-morrow?’ Robert Jordan asked
him.

213

‘Yes/ Pablo said. ‘I believe it will be cold and clear. This wind
is shifting.*

Look at him, Robert Jordan thought. Now he is friendly. He
has shifted like the wind. He has the face and the body of a pig
and I know he is many times a murderer and yet he has the sensi-
tivity of a good aneroid. Yes, he thought, and the pig is a very
intelligent animal, too. Pablo has hatred for us, or perhaps it is
only for our projects, and pushes his hatred with insults to the
point where you are ready to do away with him and when he
sees that this point has been reached he drops it and starts all new
and clean again.

‘We will have good weather for it, Ingles / Pablo said to Robert
Jordan.

‘ W <?/ Pilar said. f We ?’

‘Yes, we/ Pablo grinned at her and drank some of the wine.
‘Why not? I thought it over while I was outside. Why should we
not agree?’

‘In what?* the woman asked. ‘In what now?’

‘In all/ Pablo said to her. ‘In this of the bridge. I am with thee
now/

‘You are with us now?’ Agustin said to him. ‘After what you
have said: ’

‘Yes/ Pablo told him. ‘With the change of the weather I am
with thee/

Agustin shook his head. ‘The weather, * he said, and shook his
head again. 4 And after me hitting thee in the face ? ’

‘Yes/ Pablo grinned at him and ran his fingers over his lips.
‘After that too.’

Robert Jordan was watching Pilar. She was looking at Pablo as
at some strange animal. On her face there was still a shadow of
|Ehe expression the mention of the blinding had put there. She
shook her head as though to be rid of that, then tossed it back.
‘Listen/ she said to Pablo.

‘Yes, woman/

‘What passes with thee?’

‘Nothing/ Pablo said. ‘I have changed my opinion. Nothing
more/

‘You were listening at the door/ she told him.

‘Yes/ he said. ‘But I could hear nothing/

‘You fear that we will kill thee/

214

‘No/ he told her and looked at her over the wine cup. ‘I do not
fear that. You know that/

•Well, what passes with, thee?’ Agustin said. ‘One moment you
are drunk and putting your mouth oij all of us and disassociating
yourself from the work in hand and speaking of our death in a
dirty- manner and insulting the women and opposing that which
should be done — *

‘I was drunk/ Pablo told him.

‘And now — ’

‘I am not drunk/ Pablo said. ‘And I have changed my mind/

‘Let the others trust thee. I do not/ Agustin said.

‘Trust me or not/ Pablo said. ‘But there is no one who can take
thee to Credos as I can/

‘Gredos?*

‘It is the only place to go after this of the bridge/

Robert Jordan, looking at Pilar, raised his hand on the side
away from Pablo and tapped his right ear questioningly.

The woman nodded. Then nodded again. She said something
to Maria and the girl came over to Robert Jordan’s side.

‘She says, “Of course he heard,” ’ Maria said in Robert Jordan’s
ear.

‘Then Pablo/ Fernando said judicially. ‘Thou art with us now
and in favour of this of the bridge?’

‘Yes, man,’ Pablo said. He looked Fernando squarely in the eye
and nodded.

‘In truth?’ Primitivo asked.

‘ De veras ,’ Pablo told him.

‘And you think it can be successful?’ Fernando asked. ‘You
now have confidence? ’

‘Why not?’ Pablo said. ‘Haven’t you confidence?’

‘Yes/ Fernando said. ‘But I always have confidence/

I’m going to get out of here,’ Agustin said.

‘It is cold outside,’ Pablo told him in a friendly tone.

‘Maybe/ Agustin said. ‘But I can’t stay any longer in this
mantcomio /

‘Do not call this cave an insane asylum/ Fernando said.

‘A manicomio for criminal lunatics/ Agustin said. ‘And I’m
getting out before I’m crazy, too.’

215

CHAPTER l8

It is like a merry-go-round, Robert Jordan thought. Not a merry-
go-round that travels fast, and with a calliope for music, and the
children ride on cows with gilded horns, and there are rings to
catch with sticks, and there is the blue, gas-flare-lit early dark of
the Avenue du Maine, with fried fish sold from the next stall, and
a wheel of fortune turning with the leather flaps slapping against
the posts of the numbered compartments, and the packages of
lump sugar piled in pyramids for prizes. No, it is not that kind
of a merry-go-round; although the people are waiting, like the
men in caps and the women in knitted sweaters, their heads bare
in the gaslight and their hair shining, who stand in front of the
wheel of fortune as it spins. Yes, those are the people. But this is
another wheel. This is like a wheel that goes up and around.

It has been around twice now. It is a vast wheel, set at an angle,
and each time it goes around and then is back to where it starts.
One side is higher than the other and the sweep it makes lifts you
back and down to where you started. There are no prizes either,
he thought, and no one would choose to ride this wheel. You ride
it each time and make the turn with no intention ever to have
mounted. There is only one turn; one large, elliptical, rising and
falling turn and you are back where you have started. We are
back again now, he thought, and nothing is setded.

It was warm in the cave and the wind had dropped outside.
Now he was sitting at the table with his notebook in front of him
figuring all the technical part of the bridge-blowing. He drew
three sketches, figured his formulas, marked the method of blow-
ing with two drawings as clearly as a kindergarten project so that
Anselmo could complete it in case anything should happen to
himself during the process of the demolition. He finished these
sketches and studied them.

Maria sat beside him and looked over his shoulders while he
worked. He was conscious of Pablo across the table and of the
others talking and playing cards and he smelled the odours of the
cave which had changed now from those of the meal and the
216

cooking to the fire smoke and man smell, the tobacco, red-wine,
and brassy, stale body smell, and when Maria, watching him fin-
ishing a drawing, put her hand on the table he picked it up with
his left hand and lifted it to his face and smelled the coarse soap
and-water freshness from her washing of the dishes. He laid her
hand down without looking at her and went on working and he
could not see her blush. She let her hand lie there, close to his,
but he did not lift it again.

Now he had finished the demolition project and he took a new
page of the notebook and commenced to write out the operation
orders. He was thinking clearly and well on these and what he
wrote pleased him. He wrote two pages in the notebook and read
them over carefully.

I think that is all, he said to himself. It is perfectly clear and I
do not think there are any holes in it. The two posts will be
destroyed and the bridge will be blown according to Goiz’s order
and that is all of my responsibility. All of this business of Pablo
is something with which I should never have been saddled and it
will be solved one way or another. There will be Pablo or there
will be no Pablo. I care nothing about it either way. But I am not
going to get on that wheel again. Twice I have been on that
wheel and twice it has gone around and come back to where it
started and I am taking no more rides on it.

He shut the notebook and looked up at Maria. ‘ Hola , guapa 9
he said to her. "Did you make anything out of all that r ’

‘No, Roberto,’ the girl said and put her hand on his hand that
still held the pencil. ‘Have you finished?’

‘Yes. Now it is all written out and ordered.’

‘What have you been doing, Ingles ?’ Pablo asked from across
the table. His eyes were bleary again.

Robert Jordan looked at him closely. Stay off that wheel, he
said to himself. Don’t step on that wheel. I think it is going to
start to swing again.

‘Working on the problem of the bridge,’ he said civilly.

‘How is it?’ asked Pablo.

‘Very good,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘All very good . 9

T have been working on the problem of the retreat,’ Pablo said,
and Robert Jordan looked at his drunken pig eyes and at the wine
bowl. The wine bowl was nearly empty.

Keep off the wheel, he told himself. He is drinking again. Sure.

217

But don't you get on that wheel now. Wasn't Grant supposed to
be drunk a good part of the time during the Civil War? Certainly
he was. Ill bet Grant would be furious at the comparison if he
could see Pablo. Grant was a cigar smoker, too. Well, he would
have to see about getting Pablo a cigar. That was what that face
really needed to complete it; a half-chewed cigar. Where could
he get Pablo a cigar?

‘How does it go?’ Robert Jordan asked politely.

‘Very well,’ Pablo said and nodded his head heavily and judi-
ciously. ‘Muy bien'

‘You’ve thought up something?’ Agustin asked from where
they were playing cards.

‘Yes,’ Pablo said. ‘Various things.’

‘Where did you find them? In that bowl?’ Agustin demanded.

‘Perhaps,’ Pablo said. ‘Who knows? Maria, fill the bowl, will
you, please?’

‘In the wineskin itself there should be some fine ideas,’ Agustin
turned back to the card game. ‘Why don’t you crawl in and look
for them inside the skin?’

‘Nay,’ said Pablo equably. ‘I search for them in the bowl.’

He is not getting on the wheel either, Robert Jordan thought.
It must be revolving by itself. I suppose you cannot ride that wheel
too long. That is probably quite a deadly wheel. Pm glad we are
off it. It was making me dizzy there a couple of times. But it is
the thing that drunkards and those who are truly mean or cruel
ride until they die. It goes around and up and the swing is never
quite the same and then it comes around down. Let it swing, he
thought. They will not get me on to it again. No sir. General
Grant, I am off that wheel.

Pilar was sitting by the fire, her chair turned so that she could
see over the shoulders of the two cards players who had their backs
to her. She was watching the game.

Here it is the shift from deadliness to normal family life that is
the strangest, Robert Jordan thought. It is when the damned
wheel comes down that it gets you. But I am off that wheel, he
thought. And nobody is going to get me on to it again.

Two days ago I never knew that Pilar, Pablo, nor the rest
existed, he thought. There was no such thing as Maria in the
world. It was certainly a much simpler world. 'I had instructions
from Golz that were perfectly clear and seemed perfectly possible
218

to carry out although they presented certain difficulties and in-
volved certain consequences. After we blew’ the bridge I ex-
pected either to get back to the lines or not get back and if we got
back I was going to ask for some time in Madrid. No one has any
leave in this war but 1 am sure I could get two or three days in
Madrid.

In Madrid I wanted to buy some books, to go to the Florida
Hotel and get a room and to have a hot bath, he thought. I was
going to send Luis the porter out for a bottle of absinthe if he
could locate one at the Mantequerias Leonesas or at any of the
places oti the Gran Via and I was going to lie in bed and read
after the bath and drink a couple of absinthes and then I was
going to call up Gaylord’s and see if I could come up there and
eat.

He did not want to eat at the Gran Via because the food was no
good really and you have to get there on time or whatever there
was of it would be gone. Also there w f ere too many newspaper
men there he knew and he did not want to have to keep his mouth
shut. He wanted to drink the absinthes and to feel like talking
and then go up to Gaylord’s and eat with Karkov, where they
had good food and real beer, and find out what was going on in
the war.

He had not liked Gaylord’s, the hotel in Madrid the Russians
had taken over, w r hen he first went there because it seemed too
luxurious and the food was too good for a besieged city and the
talk too cynical for a war. But I corrupted very easily, he thought.
Why should you not have as good food as could be organized
when you came back from something like this? And the talk that
he had thought of as cynicism when he had first heard it had
turned out to be much too true. This will be something to tell at
Gaylord’s, he thought, when this is over. Yes, when this is over.

Could you take Maria to Gaylord’s? No. You couldn’t. But you
could leave her in the hotel and she could take a hot bath and be
there when you came back from Gaylord’s. Yes, you could do that
and after you had told Karkov about her, you could bring her
later because they would be curious about her and want to see her.

Maybe you wouldn’t go to Gaylord’s at all. You could eat
early at the Gran Via and hurry back to the Florida. But you
knew you would go to Gaylord’s because you wanted to see all
that again; you wanted to eat that food again and you wanted to
219

see all the comfort of it and the luxury of it after this. Then you
would come back to the Florida and there Maria would be. Sure,
she would be there after this was over. After this was over. Yes,
after this was over. If he did this well he would rate a meal at
Gaylord’s.

Gaylord’s was the place where you met famous peasant and
worker Spanish commanders who had sprung to arms from the
people at the start of the war without any previous military train-
ing and found that many of them spoke Russian. That had been
the first big disillusion to him a few months back and he had
started to be cynical to himself about it. But when he realized
how it happened it was all right. They were peasants and workers.
They had been active in the 1934 revolution and had to flee the
country when it failed and in Russia they had sent them to the
military academy and to the Lenin Institute the Comintern main-
tained so they would be ready to fight the next time and have the
necessary military education to command.

The Comintern had educated them there. In a revolution you
could not admit to outsiders who helped you nor that anyone
knew more than he was supposed to know. He had learned that.
If a thing was right fundamentally the lying was not supposed to
matter. There was a lot of lying though. He did not care for the
lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It
was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business.

It was at Gaylord’s that you learned that Valentin Gonzalez,
called El Campesino or The Peasant, had never been a peasant
but was an ex-sergeant in the Spanish Foreign Legion who had
deserted and fought with Abd el Krim. That was all right, too.
Why shouldn’t he be? You had to have these peasant leaders
quickly in this sort of war and a real peasant leader might be a
little too much like Pablo. You couldn’t wait for the real Peasant
Leader to arrive and he might have too many peasant character-
istics when he did. So you had to manufacture one. At that, from
what he had seen of Campesino, with his black beard, his thick
negroid lips, and his feverish, staring eyes, he thought he might
give almost as much trouble as a real peasant leader. The last time
he had seen him, he seemed to have gotten to believe his own
publicity and think he was a peasant. He was a brave, tough man;
no braver in the world. But God, how he talked too much. And
when he was excited he would say anything no matter what the

220

consequences of ills indiscretion. And those consequences had
been nianv already. He was a wonderful Brigade Commander
though, in a situation where it looked as though everything was
lost. He never knew when everything was lost, and if it was, he
would fight out of it.

At Gaylord’s, too, you met the simple stonemason, Enrique
Lister from Galicia, who now commanded a division and who
talked Russian, too. And you met the cabinet worker, Juan
Modesto from Andaiucia who had just been given an Army
Corps. He never learned hi s Russian in Puerto de Santa Maria
although he might have if they had a Berlitz School there that
the cabinet makers went to. He was the most trusted of the young
soldiers by the Russians because he was a true party man, fc a
hundred per cent’ they said, proud to use the Americanism. He
was much more intelligent than Lister or El Campesino.

Sure, Gaylord’s was the place you needed to complete your
education. It was there you learned how it was all really done
instead of how 1, it was supposed to be done. He had only started
his education, he thought. He wondered whether he would con-
tinue with it long. Gaylord’s was good and sound and what he
needed. At the start when he had still believed all the nonsense
it had come as a shock to him. But now he knew enough to accept
the necessity for all the deception, and what he learned at Gay-
lord’s only strengthened him in his belief in the things that he
did hold to be true. He liked to know it really was; not how it
was supposed to be. There was always lying in a war. But the
truth of Lister, Modesto, and El Campesino was much better
than the lies and legends. Well, some day they would tell the
truth to everyone and meantime he was glad there was a Gay-
lord’s for his own learning of it.

Yes, that was where he would go in Madrid after he had bought
the books and after he had lain in the hot bath and had a couple
of drinks and had read awhile. But that was before Maria had
come into all this that he had that plan. All right. They would
have two rooms and she could do what she liked while he went
up there and he’d come back from Gaylord’s to her. She had
waited up in the hills all this time. She could ‘wait a little while
at the Hotel Florida. They would have three days in Madrid.
Three days could be a long time. He’d take her to see the Marx
Brothers at the Opera. That had been running for three months

221

now and would certainly be good for three months more. She’d
like the Marx Brothers at the Opera, he thought. She’d like that
very much.

It was a long way from Gaylord’s to this cave though. No, that
was not the long way. The long way was going to be from this
cave to Gaylord’s. Kashkin had taken him there first and he had
not liked it. Kashkin had said he should meet Karkov because
Karkov wanted to know Americans and because he was the
greatest lover of Lope de Vega in the world and thought ‘Fuente
Ovejuna’ was the greatest play ever written. Maybe it was at
that, but he, Robert Jordan, did not think so.

He had liked Karkov but not the place. Karkov was the most
intelligent man he had ever met. Wearing black riding boots,
grey breeches, and a grey tunic, with tiny hands and feet, puffily
fragile of face and body, with a spitting way of talking through
his bad teeth, he looked comic when Robert Jordan first saw him.
But he had more brains and more inner dignity and outer in-
solence and humour than any man that he had ever known.

Gaylord’s itself had seemed indecently luxurious and corrupt.
But why shouldn’t the representatives of a power that governed
a sixth of the world have a few comforts? Well, they had them
and Robert Jordan had at first been repelled by the whole business
and then had accepted it and enjoyed it. Kashkin had made him
out to be a hell of a fellow and Karkov had at first been insult-
ingly polite and then, when Robert Jordan had not played at being
a hero but had told a story that was really funny and obscenely
discreditable to himself, Karkov had shifted from the politeness
to a relieved rudeness and then to insolence and they had become
friends.

Kashkin had only been tolerated there. There was something
wrong with Kashkin evidently and he was working it out in
Spain. They would not tell him what it was but maybe they
would now that he was dead. Anyway, he and Karkov had be-
come friends and he had become friends too with the incredibly
thin, drawn, dark, loving, nervous, deprived, and unbitter woman
with a lean, neglected body and dark, grey-streaked hair cut short
who was Karkov’s wife and who served as an interpreter with
the tank corps. He was a friend too of Karkov’s mistress, who
had cat-eyes, reddish gold hair (sometimes more red; sometimes
more gold, depending on the coiffeurs), a lazy sensual body

222

(made to fit well against other bodies), a mouth made to fit other
mouths, and a stupid, ambitious, and utterly loyal mind. This
mistress loved gossip and enjoyed a periodically controlled prom-
iscuity which seemed only to amuse Karkov. Karkov was sup-
posed to have another wife somewhere beside the tank-corps one,
mas be two more, but nobody was very sure about that, Robert
Jordan liked both the wife he knew and the mistress. He thought
he would probably like the other wife, too, if he knew 7 her, if
there was one. Karkov had good taste in women.

There were sentries with bayonets dowmstairs outside the porte-
cochere at Gaylord’s and to-night it would be the pleasant and
most comfortable place in all of besieged Madrid. He would like
to be there to-night instead of here. Though it was all right here,
now they had stopped that wheel. And the snow was stopping
too.

He would like to show his Maria to Karkov but he could not
take her there unless he asked first and he w’ould have to see how
he was received after this trip. Golz would be there after this
attack was over and if he had done w^ell they would all know it
from Golz. Golz would make fun of him, too, about Maria. After
what he’d said to him about no girls.

He reached over to the bowi in front of Pablo and dipped up a
cup of wine. ‘With your permission,’ he said.

Pablo nodded. He is engaged in his military studies, I imagine,
Robert Jordan thought. Not seeking the bubble reputation in the
cannon’s mouth but seeking the solution to the problem in yonder
bowl. But you know the bastard must be fairly able to have run
this band successfully for as long as he did. Looking at Pablo he
wondered what sort of guerrilla leader he would have been in the
American Civil War. There were lots of them, he thought. But
we know very little about them. Not the Quantrills, nor the
Mosbys, nor his own grandfather, but the little ones, the bush-
whackers. And about the drinking. Do you suppose Grant really
was a drunk? His grandfather always claimed he was. That he
was always a little drunk by four o’clock in the afternoon and
that before Vicksburg sometimes during the siege he was very
drunk for a couple of days. But grandfather claimed that he
functioned perfectly normally no matter how much he drank
except that sometimes it was very hard to wake him. But if you
could wake him he was normal.

223

There wasn’t any Grant, nor any Sherman, nor any Stonewall
Jackson on either side so far in this war. No. Nor any Jeb Stuart
either. Nor any Sheridan. It was overrun with McClellans though.
The fascists had plenty of McClellans and we had at least three of
them.

He had certainly not seen any military geniuses in this war.
Not a one. Nor anything resembling one. Kleber, Lucasz, and
Hans had done a fine job of their share in the defence of Madrid
with the International Brigades and then the old bald, spectacled,
conceited, stupid-as-an-owl, unintelligent-in-conversation, brave-
and-as-dumb-as-a-bull, propaganda-built-up defender of Madrid,
Miaja, had been so jealous of the publicity Kleber received that
he had forced the Russians to relieve Kleber of his command and
send him to Valencia. Kleber was a good soldier; but limited and
he did talk too much for the job he had. Golz was a good general
and a fine soldier but they always kept him in a subordinate
position and never gave him a free hand. This attack was going
to be his biggest show so far and Robert Jordan did not like too
much what he had heard about the attack. Then there was Gall,
the Hungarian, who ought to be shot if you could believe half
you heard at Gaylord’s. Make it if you can believe ten per cent
of what you hear at Gaylord’s, Robert Jordan thought.

He wished that he had seen the fighting on the plateau beyond
Guadalajara when they beat the Italians. But he had been down
in Estremadura then. Hans had told him about it one night in
Gaylord’s two weeks ago and made him see it all. There was one
moment when it was really lost, when the Italians had broken the
line near Trijueque and the Twelfth Brigade would have been
cut off if the Torija-Brihuega road had been cut. ‘But knowing
they were Italians,’ Hans had said, ‘we attempted a manoeuvre
which* would have been unjustifiable against other troops. And
it was successful.’

Hans had shown it all to him on his maps of the battle. Hans
carried them around with him in his map case all the time and
still seemed marvelled and happy at the miracle of it. Hans was
a fine soldier and a good companion. Lister’s and Modesto’s and
Campesino’s Spanish troops had all fought well in that battle,
Hans had told him, and that was to be credited to their leaders
and to the discipline they enforced. But Lister and Campesino
and Modesto had been told many of the moves they should make
224 '

by their Russian military advisers. They were like students Hying
a machine with dual controls which the pilot could take over
whenever they made a mistake. Well, this year would show how
much and how well they learned. After a while there would not
be dual controls and then we would see how well they handled
divisions and army corps alone.

They were Communists and they were disciplinarians. The
discipline that they would enforce would make good troops.
Lister was murderous in discipline. He was a true fanatic and he
had the complete Spanish lack of respect for life. In few armies
since the Tartar’s first invasion of the West were men executed
summarily for as little reason as they were under his command.
But he knew how to forge a division into fighting unit. It is one
thing to hold positions. It is another to attack positions and take
them and it is something very different to manoeuvre an army in
the field, Robert Jordan thought as he sat there at the table. From
what I have seen of him, I wonder how Lister will be at that once
the dual controls are gone? But maybe they won’t go, he thought.
I wonder if they will go? Or w T hether they will strengthen? I
wonder what the Russian stand is on the whole business? Gay-
lord’s is the place, he thought. There is much that I need to know
now that I can learn only at Gaylord’s.

At one time he had thought Gaylord’s had been bad for him.
It was the opposite of the puritanical, religious communism of
Velazquez 63, the Madrid palace that had been turned into the
International Brigade headquarters in the capital. At Velazquez
63 it was like being a member of a religious order — and Gaylord’s
was a long way away from the feeling you had at the headquarters
of the Fifth Regiment before it had been broken up in the brigades
of the new army.

At either of those places you felt that you were taking part in a
crusade. That was the only word for it although it was a word
that had been so worn and abused that it no longer gave its true
meaning. You felt, in spite of all bureaucracy and inefficiency and
party strife, something that was like the feeling you expected to
have and did not have when you made your first communion. It
was a feeling of consecration to a duty toward all of the oppressed
of the world which would be as difficult and embarrassing to
speak about as religious experience and yet it was authentic as
the feeling you had when you heard Bach, or stood in Chartres

225

Cathedral or the Cathedral at Leon and saw the light coming
through the great windows; or when you saw Mantegna and
Greco and Brueghel in the Prado. It gave you a part in some-
thing that you could believe in wholly and completely and in
which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were
engaged in it. It was something that you had never known before
but that you had experienced now, and you gave such importance
to It and the reasons for it that your own death seemed of com-
plete unimportance; only a thing to be avoided because it would
interfere with the performance of your duty. But the best thing
was that there was something you could do about this feeling and
this necessity too. You could fight.

So you fought, he thought. And in the fighting soon there was
no purity of feeling for those who survived the fighting and were
good at it. Not after the first six months.

The defence of a position or of a city is a part of war in which
you can feel that first sort of feeling. The fighting in the Sierras
had been that way. They had fought there with the true comrade-
ship of the revolution. Up there when there had been the first
necessity for the enforcement of discipline he had approved and
understood it. Under the shelling men had been cowards and
had run. He had seen them shot and left to swell beside the road,
nobody bothering to do more than strip them of their cartridges
and their valuables. Taking their cartridges, their boots, and
their leather coats was right. Taking the valuables was only
realistic. It only kept the anarchists from getting them.

It had seemed just and right and necessary that the men who
ran were shot. There was nothing wrong about it. Their running
was a selfishness. The fascists had attacked and we had stopped
them on that slope in the grey rocks, the scrub pines, and the
gorse of the Guadarrama hillsides. We had held along the road
under the bombing from the planes and the shelling when they
brought their artillery up and those who were left at the end of
that day had counter-attacked and driven them back. Later, when
they had tried to come down on the left, sifting down between
the rocks and through the trees, we had held out in the Sani-
torium, firing from the windows and the roof although they had
passed it on both sides, and we lived through knowing what it
was to be surrounded until the counter-attack had cleared them
back behind the road again.

226

In all that, in the fear that dries your mouth and your throat,
in the smashed plaster dust and the sudden panic of a wall fall-
ing, collapsing in the flash and roar of a shellburst, clearing the
gun, dragging those away who had been serving it, lying face
downward and covered with rubble, your head behind the shield
working on a stoppage, getting the broken case out, straightening
the belt again, you now lying straight behind the shield, the gun
searching the roadside again; you did the thing there was to do
and knew that you were right. You learned the dry-mouthed,
fear-purged, purging ecstasy of battle and you fought that sum-
mer and that autumn for all the poor in the world, against all
tyranny, for all the things that you believed and for the new
world you had been educated into. You learned that autumn, he
thought, how to endure and how to ignore suffering in the long
time of cold and wetness, of mud and of digging and fortifying.
And the feeling of the summer and the autumn was buried deep
under tiredness, sleepiness, and nervousness and discomfort. But
it was still there and all that you went through only served to
validate it. It was in those days, he thought, that you had a deep'
and sound and selfless pride - that would have made you a bloody
bore at Gaylord's, he thought suddenly.

No, you would not have been so good at Gaylord’s then, he
thought. You were too naive. You were in a sort of state of grace.
But Gaylord's might not have been the way it was now at that
time, either. No, as a matter of fact, it was not that way, he told
himself. It was not that way at all. There was not any Gaylord’s
then.

Karkov had told him about those days. At that time what Rus-
sians there were had lived at the Palace Hotel. Robert Jordan had
known none of them then. That was before the first partizan
groups had been formed; before he had met Kashkin or any of
the others. Kashkin had been in the north at Irun, at San Sebas-
tian, and in the abortive fighting toward Vitoria. He had not
arrived in Madrid until January and while Robert Jordan had
fought at Carabanchel and at Usera in those three days when
they stopped the right wing of the fascist attack on Madrid and
drove the Moors and the Terrio back from house to house to
clear that battered suburban the edge of the grey, sun-baked
plateau and establish a line of defence along the heights that
would protect that comer of the city, Karkov had been in Madrid.

22 7

Karkov was not cynical about those times either when he
talked. Those were the days they all shared when everything
looked lost and each man retained now, better than any citation
or decoration, the knowledge of just how he would act when
everything looked lost. The government had abandoned the citv,
taking all the motor-cars from the ministry of war in their flight
and old Miaja had to ride down to inspect his defensive positions
on a bicycle, Robert Jordan did not believe that one. He could
not see Miaja on a bicycle even in his most patriotic imagination,
but Karkov said it was true. But then he had written it for Rus-
sian papers so he probably wanted to believe it was true after
writing it.

But there was another story that Karkov had not written. He
had three wounded Russians in the Palace Hotel for whom he
was responsible. They were two tank drivers and a flyer who
were too bad to be moved, and since, at that time, it was of the
greatest importance that there should be no evidence of any Rus-
sion intervention to justify an open intervention by the fascists,
it was Karkov’s responsibility that these wounded should not fail
into the hands of the fascists in case the city should be abandoned.

In the event the city should be abandoned, Karkov was to
poison them to destroy all evidence of their identity before leav-
ing the Palace Hotel. No one could prove from the bodies of
three wounded men, one with three bullet wounds in his abdo-
men, one with his jaw shot away and his vocal cords exposed, one
with his femur smashed to bits by a bullet and his hands and
face so badly burned that his face was just an eyelashless, eye-
browless, hairless blister that they were Russians. No one could
tell from the bodies of these wounded men he would leave in
beds at the Palace that they were Russians. Nothing proved a
n$ked' dead man was a Russian. Your nationality and your
politics did not show when you were dead.

Robert Jordan had asked Karkov how he felt about the neces-
sity of performing this act and Karkov had said that he had not
looked forward to it. ‘How were you going to do it?* Robert
Jordan had asked him and had added, ‘You know it isn’t so
simple just suddenly to poison peopled And Karkov had said,
‘Oh, yes, it is when you carry it always for your own used Then
he had opened his cigarette case and showed Robert Jordan what
he carried in one side of it.

228

‘But the first thing anybody would do if they took you prisoner
would be to take your cigarette case,’ Robert Jordan had objected.
They would have your hands up.’

‘But I have a little more here/ Karkov had grinned and showed
the lapel of his jacket. ‘You simply put the lapel in vour mouth
like this and bite it and swallow. 5

‘That’s much better/ Robert Jordan had said. ‘Tell me, does
it smell like bitter almonds the way it always does in detective
stories 3 *

‘I don’t know/ Karkov said delightedly. ‘I have never smelled
it. Should we break a little tube and smell it? 5

‘Better keep it.’

‘Yes/ Karkov said and put the cigarette case away. ‘I am not a
defeatist, you understand, but it is always possible that such
serious times might come again and you cannot get this any-
where. Have you seen the communique from the Cordoba front?
It is very beautiful. It is now my favourite among all the com-
muniques/

‘What did it say?’ Robert Jordan had come to Madrid from
the Cordoban Front and he had the sudden stiffening that comes
when someone jokes about a thing which you yourself may joke
about but which they may not. ‘Tell me? 5

‘ Nuestra gloriosa tropa siga avanzando sin perder ni una sola
palma de terreno / Karkov said in his strange Spanish.

‘It didn’t really say that/ Robert Jordan doubted.

‘Our glorious troops continue to advance without losing a foot
of ground/ Karkov repeated in English. ‘It is in the communique.
I will find it for you/

You could remember the men you knew who died in the fight-
ing around Pozoblanco; but it was a joke at Gaylord’s.

So that was the way it was at Gaylord’s now. Still there had not
always been Gaylord’s and if the situation was now one which
produced such a thing as Gaylord’s out of the survivors of the
early days, he was glad to see Gaylord’s and to know about it. You
are a long way from how you felt in the Sierra and at Carabanchel
and at Usera, he thought. You corrupt very easily, he thought.
But was it corruption or was It merely that you lost the naivety
that you started with? W«uld it not be the same in anything?
Who else kept that Erst chastity of mind about their work that
young doctors, young priests, and young soldiers usually started
229

with? The priests certainly kept it, or they got out. I suppose the
Nazis keep it, he thought, and the Communists who have a
severe enough self-discipline. But look at Karkov.

He never tired of considering the case of Karkov. The last time
he had been at Gaylord’s Karkov had been wonderful about a
certain British economist who had spent much time in Spain.
Robert Jordan had read this man’s writing for years and he had
always respected him without knowing anything about him. He
had not cared very much for what this man had written about
Spain. It was too clear and simple and too open and shut and
many of the statistics he knew were faked by wishful thinking.
But he thought you rarely cared for journalism written about a
country you really knew about and he respected the man for his
intentions.

Then he had seen the man, finally, on the afternoon when they
had attacked at Carabanchel. They were sitting in the lee of the
bull-ring and there was shooting down the tw T o streets and every-
one was nervous waiting for the attack. A tank had been promised
and it had not come up and Montero was sitting with his head in
his hand saying, ‘The tank has not come. The tank has not come.’

It was a cold day and the yellow dust was blowing down the
street and Montero had been hit in the left arm and the arm was
stiffening. ‘We have to have a tank,* he said. ‘We must wait for
the tank, but we cannot wait.’ His wound was making him sound
petulant.

Robert Jordan had gone back to look for the tank which Mon-
tero said he thought might have stopped behind the apartment
building on the corner of the tram-line. It was there all right. But
it was not a tank. Spaniards called anything a tank in those days.
It was an old armoured car. The driver did not want to leave the
angle of the apartment house and bring it up to the bull-ring.
He was standing behind it with his arms folded against the metal
of the car and his head in the leather-padded helmet on his arms.
He shook his head when Robert Jordan spoke to him and kept
it pressed against his arms. Then he turned his head without
looking at Robert Jordan.

‘I have no orders to go there,’ he said sullenly.

Robert Jordan had taken his pistol out of the holster and pushed
the muzzle of the pistol against the leather coat of the armoured
car driver.

230

‘Here are your orders.’ he had told him. The man shook his
head with the big padded-leather helmet like a football player’s
on it and said, ‘There is no ammunition for the machine gun.’

4 We have ammunition at the bull-ring,’ Robert Jordan had told
him. ‘Come on, let’s go. We will fill the belts there. Come on.’

‘There is no one to work the gun,’ the driver said.

‘Where is he? Where is your mate?’

‘Dead,’ the driver said. ‘Inside there.’

‘Get him out,’ Robert Jordan had said. ‘Get him out of there.’

‘I do not like to touch him,’ the driver had said. ‘And he is
bent over between the gun and the wheel and I cannot get past
him.’

‘Come on,’ Robert Jordan had said. ‘We will get him out to-
gether.’

He had banged his head as he climbed into the armoured car
and it had made a small cut over his eyebrow that bled down on
to his face. The dead man was heavy and so stiff you could not
bend him and he had to hammer at his head to get it out from
where it had wedged, face-down, between his seat and the wheel.
Finally he got it up by pushing with his knee up under the dead
man’s head and then, pulling back on the man’s waist now that
the head was loose, he pulled the dead man out himself toward
the door.

‘Give me a hand with him,”he had said to the driver.

‘I do not want to touch him,’ the driver had said and Robert
Jordan had seen that he was crying. The tears ran straight down
on each side of his nose on the powder-grimed slope of his face
and his nose was running, too.

Standing beside the door he had swung the dead man out and
the dead man fell on to the sidewalk beside the tram-line still in
that hunched-over, doubled-up position. He lay there, his face
waxy grey against the cement sidewalk, his hands bent under him
as they had been in the car.

‘Get in, God damn it,’ Robert Jordan had said, motioning now
with his pistol to the driver. ‘Get in there now.’

Just then he had seen this man who had come out from the lee
of the apartment house building. He had on a long overcoat and
he was bareheaded and his hair was grey, his cheekbones broad
and his eyes were deep and set close together. He had a package
of Chesterfields in his hand and he took one out and handed it

231

toward Robert Jordan who was pushing the driver Into the
armoured car with his pistol.

'Just a minute, Comrade/ he had said to Robert Jordan in Span-
ish. ‘Can you explain to me something about the fighting?’

Robert Jordan took the cigarette and put it in the breast pocket
of his blue mechanic’s jumper. He had recognized this comrade
from his pictures. It was the British economist.

‘Go muck yourself/ he said in English and then, in Spanish, to
the armoured car driver, ‘Down there. The bull-ring. Seer’ And
he had pulled the heavy side door to with a slam and locked it and
they had started down that long slope in the car and the bullets
had commenced to hit against the car, sounding like pebbles
tossed against an iron boiler. Then when the machine gun opened
on them, they were like sharp hammer tappings. They had pulled
up behind the shelter of the bull-ring with the last October posters
still pasted up beside the ticket window and the ammunition
boxes knocked open and the comrades with the rifles, the grenades
on their belts and in their pockets, waiting there in the lee and
Montero had said, ‘Good. Here is the tank. Now we can attack/

Later that night, when they had the last houses on the hill, he
lay comfortable behind a brick wall with a hole knocked in the
bricks for a loophole and looked across the beautiful level field of
fire they had between them and the ridge the fascists had retired
to and thought, with a comfort that was almost voluptuous, of the
rise of the hill with the smashed villa that protected the left flank.
He had lain in a pile of straw in his sweat-soaked clothes and
wound a blanket around him while he dried. Lying there he
thought of the economist and laughed, and then felt sorry he had
been rude. But at the moment, when the man had handed him
the cigarette, pushing it out almost like offering a tip for informa-
tion, the combatant’s hatred for the non-combatant had been too
much for him.

Now he remembered Gaylord’s and Karkov speaking of this
same man. ‘So it was there you met him/ Karkov had said. ‘I did
not get farther than the Puente de Toledo myself on that day. He
was very far toward the front. That was the last day of his bravery,
I believe. He left Madrid the next day. Toledo was where he was
the bravest, I believe. At Toledo he was enormous. He was one
of the architects of our capture of the Alcazar. You should have
seen him at Toledo. I believe it was largely through his efforts and
232

his advice that our siege was successful. That was the silliest part
of the war. It reached an ultimate in silliness, but tell me, what is
thought of him in America?’

‘In America.’ Robert Jordan said, ‘he is supposed to be very
clo* e to Moscow.’

‘He is not,’ said Karkov, ‘But he has a wonderful face and his
face and his manners are very successful. Now with my face I
could do nothing. What little I have accomplished was all done
in spite of my face which does not either inspire people nor move
them to love me and to trust me. But this man Mitchell has a face
he makes his fortune with. It is the face of a conspirator. All w ho
have read of conspirators in books trust him instantly. Also he has
the true manner of the conspirator. Anyone seeing him enter a
room knows that he is instantly in the presence of a conspirator
of the first mark. All of your rich compatriots who wish senti-
mentally to aid the Soviet Union as they believe or to insure them-
selves a little against any eventual success of the party’ see in-
stantly in the face of this man, and in his manner, that he can be
none other than a trusted agent of the Comintern.’

‘Has he no connexions in Moscow?*

‘None. Listen, Comrade Jordan. Do you know about the two
kinds of fools?’

‘Plain and damn?’

‘No. The two kinds of fools we have in Russia,’ Karkov grinned
and began. ‘First there is the winter fool. The winter fool comes
to' the door of your house and he knocks loudly. You go to the
door and you see him there and you have never seen him before.
He is an impressive sight. He is a very big man and he has on high
boots and a fur coat and a fur hat and he is all covered with snow.
First he stamps his boots and snow falls from them. Then he takes
off his fur coat and shakes it and more snow falls. Then he takes
off his fur hat and knocks it against the door. More snow falls
from his fur hat. Then he stamps his boots again and advances
into the room. Then you look at him and you see he is a fool.
That is the winter fool.

‘Now in the summer you see a fool going down the street and
he is waving his arms and jerking his head from side to side and
everybody from two hundred yards away can tell he is a fool. That
is a summer fool. This economist is a winter fooL’

‘But why do people trust him here?’ Robert Jordan asked.

233

‘His face,’ Karkov said* ‘His beautiful guetile de conspirateur.
And his invaluable trick of just having come from somewhere
else where he is very trusted and important. Of course/ he smiled,
‘he must travel very much to keep the trick working. You know
the Spanish are very strange/ Karkov went on. ‘This government
has had much money. Much gold. They will give nothing to their
friends. You are a friend. All right. You will do it for nothing and
should not be rewarded. But to people representing an important
firm or a country which is not friendly but must be influenced —
to such people they give much. It is very interesting when you
follow it closely.’

‘I do not like it. Also that money belongs to the Spanish
workers/

‘You are not supposed to like things. Only to understand/
Karkov had told him. T teach you a little each time I see you and
eventually you will acquire an education. It would be very in-
teresting for a professor to be educated/

‘I don’t know whether I’ll be able to be a professor when I get
back. They will probably run me out as a red.’

‘Well, perhaps you will be able to come to the Soviet Union and
continue your studies there. That might be the best thing for you
to do/

‘But Spanish is my field.*

‘There are many countries where Spanish is spoken/ Karkov
had said. ‘They cannot all be as difficult to do anything with as
Spain is. Then you must remember that you have not been a pro-
fessor now for almost nine months. In nine months you may have
learned a new trade. How much dialectics have you read?’

*1 have read the Handbook of Marxism that Emil Burns edited.
That is all.’

T£ you have read it all that is quite a little. There are fifteen
hundred pages and you could spend some time on each page. But
there are some other things you should read.’

‘There is no time to read now/

*1 know/ Karkov had said.' ‘I mean eventually. There are many
things to read which will make you understand some of these
things that happen. But out of this will come a book which is very
necessary; which will explain many things which it is necessary
to know. Perhaps I will write it. I hope that it will be me who will
write it.’

234

‘I don’t know who could write It better/

‘Do not flatter/ Karkov had said. ‘I am a journalist. But like all
journalists I wish to write literature. Just now, I am very busy on
a study o£ Calvo Sotelo. He was a very good fascist; a true Spanish
fascist. Franco and these other people are not, I base been study-
ing all of Sotelo’s writings and speeches. He was very intelligent
and it was very intelligent that he was killed/

‘I thought that you did not believe in political assassination/

‘It is practised very extensively/ Karkov said. ‘Very, very exten-
sively/

‘But -*

‘We do not believe in acts of terrorism bv individuals/ Karkov
had smiled. ‘Not of course by criminal terrorist and counter-revo-
lutionary organizations. We detest with horror the duplicity and
villainy of the murderous hyenas of Bukharinite wreckers and
such dregs of humanity as Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, and their
henchmen. We hate and loathe these veritable fiends/ he smiled
again. ‘But I still believe that political assassination can be said to
be practised very extensively/

‘You mean — '

‘I mean nothing. But certainly we execute and destroy such
veritable fiends and dregs of humanity and the treacherous dogs
of generals and the revolting spectacle of admirals unfaithful to
their trust. These are destroyed. They are not assassinated. You
see the difference?’

‘I see/ Robert Jordan had said.

‘And because I make jokes sometime: and you know how
dangerous it is to make jokes even in joke? Good. Because I make
jokes, do not think that the Spanish people will not live to regret
that they have not shot certain generals that even now hold com-
mands. I do not like the shootings, you understand/

‘I don’t mind them/ Robert Jordan said. ‘I do not like them but
I do not mind them any more/

1 know that/ Karkov had said. T have been told that/

‘Is it important?* Robert Jordan said. *1 was only trying to be
truthful about it/

‘It is regretful/ Karkov had said. ‘But it is one of the things that
makes people be treated as reliable who would ordinarily have to
spend much more time before attaining that category/

‘Am I supposed to be reliable?*

2 35

‘In your work you are supposed to be very reliable. I must talk
to you sometimes to see how you are in your mind. It is regret-
table that we never speak seriously.’

‘My mind is in suspension until we win the war,’ Robert Jordan
had said.

‘Then perhaps you will not need it for a long time. But you
should be careful to exercise it a little.’

‘I read Mundo Obrero? Robert Jordan had told him and Khar-
kov had said, ‘All right. Good. I can take a joke too. But there are
very intelligent things in Mundo Obrero. The only intelligent
things written on this war.’

‘Yes,’ Robert Jordan had said. ‘I agree with you. But to get a
full picture of what is happening you cannot read only the party
organ.’

‘No,’ Karkov had said. ‘But you will not find any such picture
if you read twenty pages and then, if you had it, I do not know
what you would do with it. I have such a picture almost con-
stantly and what I do is to try to forget it.’

‘You think it is that bad ?’

‘It is better now than it was. We are getting rid of some of the
worst. But it is very rotten. We are building a huge army now
and some of the elements, those of Modesto, of El Campesino, of
Lister, and of Duran, are reliable. They are more than reliable.
They are magnificent. You will see that. Also we still have the
Brigades although their role is changing. But an army that is
made up of good and bad elements cannot win a war. All must be
brought to a certain level of political development; all must know
why they are fighting, and its importance. All must believe in the
fight they are to make and all must accept discipline. We are
making a huge conscript army without the time to implant the
discipline that a conscript army must have, to behave properly
under fire. We call it a people’s army but it will not have the assets
of a true people’s army and it will not have the iron discipline that
a conscript army needs. You will see. It is a very dangerous pro-
cedure.’

‘You are not very cheerful to-day.’

‘No,’ Karkov had said. ‘I have just come back from Valencia
where I have seen many people. No one comes back very cheerful
from Valencia, In Madrid you feel good and clean and with no
possibility of anything but winning. Valencia is something else.
236

The cowards who fled from Madrid still govern there. They have
settled happily into the sloth ar.c bureaucracy of governing. They
hai c only contempt for there of Madrid. Their obsession now is
the weakening of the commr sariat for war. And Barcelona. You
should see Barcelona/

"How is it ? 5

Tt is all still comic opera. First it was the paradise or the crack-
pots and the romantic revolutionists. Now it is the paradise of the
fake soldier. The soldiers who like to wear uniforms, who like to
strut and swagger and wear red-and-black scarves. Who like
everything about war except to fight. Valencia makes you sick
and Barcelona makes you laugh/

‘What about the P.O.U.M. putsch?’

‘The P.O.U.M. was never serious. It was a heresy of crackpots
and wild men and it was really just an infantilism. There were
some honest misguided people. There was one fairly good brain
and there was a little fascist money. Not much. The poor
P.O.U.M. They were very silly people/

‘But were many killed in the putsch?’

‘Not so many as were shot afterwards or will be shot. The
P.O.U.M. It is like the name. Not* serious. They should have
called it the M.U.M.P.S. or the M.E.A.S.L.E.S.' But no. The
Measles is much more dangerous. It can affect both sight and
hearing. But they made one plot you know to kill me, to kill
Walter, to kill Modesto, and to kill Prieto. You see how badly
mixed up they were? We are not at all alike. Poor P.O.U.M.
They never did kill anybody. Not at the front nor anywhere else,
A few in Barcelona, yes.’

‘Were you there?’

‘Yes. I have sent a cable describing the wickedness of that in-
famous organization of Trotskyite murderers and their fascist
machinations, all beneath contempt but, between us, it is not very
serious, the P.O.U.M. Nin was their only man. We had him but
he escaped from our hands/

‘Where is he now? ’

‘In Paris. We say he is in Paris. He was a very pleasant fellow
but with bad political aberrations/

‘But they were in communication with the fascists, weren’t
they?’

‘Who is not?*

^37

4 We are not.’

‘Who knows? I hope we are not. You go often behind their
lines/ he grinned. ‘But the brother of one of the secretaries of the
Republican Embassy at Paris made a trip to St Jean de Luz last
week to meet people from Burgos.’

‘I like it better at the front,’ Robert Jordan had said. ‘The closer
to the front the better the people/

‘How do you like it behind the fascist lines?’

‘Very much. We have fine people there.’

‘Well, you see they must have their fine people behind our lines
the same way. We find them and shoot them and they find ours
and shoot them. When you are in their country you must always
think of how many people they must send over to us.’

‘I have thought about them.’

‘Well/ Karkov had said. ‘You have probably enough to think
about for to-day, so drink that beer that is left in the pitcher, and
run along now because I have to go upstairs to see people. Up
stairs people. Come again to see me soon.’

Yes, Robert Jordan thought. You learned a lot at Gaylord’s.
Karkov had read the one and only book he had published. The
book had not been a success. It was only two hundred pages long
and he doubted if two thousand people had ever read it. He had
put in it what he had discovered about Spain in ten years of
travelling in it, on foot, in third-class carriages, by bus, on horse-
and mule-back, and in trucks. He knew the Basque country,
Navarre, Aragon, Galicia, the two Castiles, and Estremadura
well. There had been such good books written by Borrow and
Ford and the rest that he had been able to add very little. But
Karkov said it was a good book.

‘It is why I bother with you/ he had said. ‘I think you write
absolutely truly and that is very rare. So I would like you to know
some things/

All right. He would write a book when he got through with
this. But only about the things he knew, truly, and about what he
knew. But I will have to be a much better writer than I am now
to handle them, he thought. The things he had come to know
in this war were not so simple.

238

CHAPTER 19

4 What do you do sitting there?’ Maria asked him. She was
standing close beside him and he turned his head and smiled at
her.

‘Nothing,’ he said. T have been thinking.’

‘What or? The bridge; ’

‘No. The bridge is terminated. Of thee and of a hotel in Madrid
where I know some Russians, and of a book I will write some
time.’

‘Are there many Russians in Madrid?’

‘No. Very few.’

‘But in the fascist periodicals it says there are hundreds of
thousands.’

‘Those are lies. There are very few.’

‘Do you like the Russians r The one who w T as here was a Rus-
sian.’

‘Did you like him?’

‘Yes. I was sick then but I thought he was very beautiful and
very brave.’

‘What nonsense, beautiful,’ Pilar said. ‘His nose was flat as my
hand and he had cheekbones as wide as a sheep’s buttocks.’

‘He was a good friend and comrade of mine,’ Robert Jordan
said to Maria. ‘I cared for him very much.’

‘Sure,’ Pilar said. ‘But you shot him.’

When she said this the card players looked up from the table
and Pablo stared at Robert Jordan. Nobody said anything and
then the gipsy, Rafael, asked, Ts it true, Roberto?’

‘Yes,’ Robert Jordan said. He wished Pilar had not brought this
up and he wished he had not told it at El Sordo’s. ‘At his request.
Pie was badly wounded.’

‘ QuS cosa mas rarad the gipsy said. ‘Ail the time he was with
us he talked of such a possibility. I don’t know how many times
I have promised him to perform such an act. What a rare thing,’
he said again and shook his head.

‘He was a very rare man,’ Primitive said. ‘Very singular.’

‘Look,* Andres, one of the brothers, said. ‘You who are pro-
fessor and ail. Do you believe in the possibility of a man seeing
ahead what is to happen to him ?*

‘I believe he cannot see it,’ Robert Jordan said. Pablo was star-
ing at him curiously and Pilar was watching him with no ex-
pression on her face. ‘In the case of this Russian comrade he was
very nervous from being too much time at the front. He had
fought at Irun which, you know, was bad. Very bad. He had
fought later in the north. And since the first groups who did this
work behind the lines were formed he had worked here, in Estre-
madura and in Andalucia. I think he was very tired and nervous
and he imagined ugly things.’

‘He would undoubtedly have seen many evil things,* Fernando
said.

‘Like all the world,’ Andres said. ‘But listen to me, Ingles. Do
you think there is such a thing as a man knowing in advance what
will befall him?*

‘No,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘That is ignorance and superstition.’

‘Go on,’ Pilar said. ‘Let us hear the viewpoint of the professor.’
She spoke as though she were talking to a precocious child.

‘I believe that fear produces evil visions,’ Robert Jordan said.
‘Seeing bad signs -*

‘Such as the airplanes to-day,’ Primitivo said.

‘Such as thy arrival,’ Pablo said softly and Robert Jordan looked
across the table at him, saw it was not a provocation but only an
expressed thought, then went on. ‘Seeing bad signs, one, with
fear, imagines an end for himself and one thinks that imagining
comes by divination,’ Robert Jordan concluded. ‘I believe there is
nothing more to it than that. I do not believe in ogres, nor sooth-
sayers, nor in supernatural things.’

‘But this one with the rare name saw his fate clearly,’ the gipsy
said. ‘And that was how it happened.*

‘He did not see it,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘He had a fear of such
a possibility and it became an obsession. No one can tell me that
he saw anything.’

‘Not I?’ Pilar asked him and picked some dust up from the fire
and blew it off the palm of her hand. ‘I cannot tell thee either?’

‘No. With all wizardry, gipsy, and all, you canst not tell me
either.’

‘Because thou art a miracle of deafness,’ Pilar said, her big face

harsh and broad in the candlelight. ‘It is not that thou art stupid.
Thou art simply deaf. One who is deaf cannot hear music. Neither
can he hear the radio. So he might say, never having heard them,
that such tilings do not exist. Que ta , Ingle:. I saw the death of
that one with the rare name in his face as though it were burned
there with a branding iron.’

‘You did not/ Robert Jordan insisted. ‘You saw fear and appre-
hension. The fear was made by what he had been through. The
apprehension was for the possibility’ of evil he imagined/

k Que vaj Pilar said. T saw’ death there as plainly as though
it were sitting on his shoulder. And what is more he smelt of
death/

‘He smelt of death/ Robert Jordan jeered. ‘Of fear maybe.
There is a smell to fear/

'De la muertej Pilar said. ‘Listen. When Blanquet, who was
the greatest peon de brega who ever lived, worked under the
orders of Granero he told me that on the day of Manolo Granero’s
death, when they stopped in the chapel on the way to the ring, the
odour of death was so strong on Manolo that it almost made
Rlanquet sick. And he had been with Manolo when he had
bathed and dressed at the hotel before setting out for the ring.
The odour was not present in the motor-car when they had sat
packed tight together riding to the bull-ring. Nor was it distin-
guishable to anyone else but Juan Luis de la Rosa in the chapel.
Neither Marcial nor Chicuelo smelled it neither then nor when
the four of them lined up for the paseo. But Juan Luis was dead
white, Blanquet told me, and he, Blanquet, spoke to him saying,
‘Thou also?'

* “So that I cannot breathe/’ Juan Luis said to him. “And from
thy matador.”

4 “ Pues nada /’ Blanquet said. “There is nothing to do. Let us
hope we are mistaken.”

‘ “And the others?” Juan Luis asked Blanquet.

4 “Nada” Blanquet said. “Nothing. But this one stinks worse
than Jose at Talavera/

‘And it was on that afternoon that the bull Pocapena of the
ranch of Veragua destroyed Manolo Granero against the planks
of the barrier in front of tendido two in the Plaza de Toros of
Madrid. I was there with Finito and I saw it. The horn entirely
destroyed the cranium, the head of Manolo being wedged under
241 v

the estribo at the base of the barrera where the bull had tossed
him.’

‘But did you smell anything?’ Fernando asked.

‘Nay,’ Pilar said. ‘I was too far away. We were in the seventh
row of tendido three. It was thus, being at an angle, that I could
see all that happened. But that same night Blanquet who had been
under the orders of Joselito when he too was killed told Finito
about it at Fornos, and Finito asked Juan Luis de la Rosa and he
would say nothing. But he nodded his head that it was true. I was
present when this happened. So, Ingles , it may be that thou art
deaf to some things as Chicuelo and Marcial Lalanda and all of
their banderilleros and picadors and all of the gente of Juan Luis
and Manolo Granero were deaf to this thing on this day. But Juan
Luis and Blanquet were not deaf. Nor am I deaf to such things.’

‘Why do you say deaf when it is a thing of the nose?’ Fernando
asked.

*; Lee he!’ Pilar said. ‘Thou shouldst be the professor in place of
the Ingles. But I could tell thee of other things, Ingles , and do not
doubt what thou simply cannot see nor cannot hear. Thou canst
not hear what a dog hears. Nor canst thou smell what a dog
smells. But already thou hast experienced a little of what can
happen to man.’

Maria put her hand on Robert Jordan’s shoulder and let it rest
there and he thought suddenly, let us finish all this nonsense and
take advantage of what time we have. But it is too early yet. We
have to kill this part of the evening. So he said to Pablo, ‘Thou,
believest thou in this wizardry ? ’

‘I do not know,’ Pablo said. ‘I am more of thy opinion. No
supernatural thing has ever happened to me. But fear, yes cer-
tainly. Plenty. But I believe that the Pilar can divine events from
the hand. If she does not lie perhaps it is true that she has smelt
such a thing.’

‘ Que va that I should lie,’ Pilar said. ‘This is not a thing of my
invention. This man Blanquet was a man of extreme seriousness
and furthermore very devout. He was no gipsy but a bourgeois
from Valencia. Hast thou never seen him?’

‘Yes,’ Robert Jordan' said. ‘I have seen him many times. He was
small, grey-faced, and no one handled a cape better. He was quick
on his feet as a rabbit.’

‘Exactly,’ Pilar said. ‘He had a grey face from heart trouble and

gipsies said that he carried death with him but that he could flick
it away with a cape as you might dust a table. Yet he, who was do
gipsy, smelled death on Joselito when he fought at Talavera. Al-
though I do not see how he could smell it above the smell of man-
zanilla. Blanquet spoke of this afterwards with much diffidence
but those to whom he spoke said that it was a fantasy and that
what he had smelled was the life that Jose led at that time coming
out in sweat from his armpits. But then, later, came this of
Manolo Granero in which Juan Luis de la Rosa also participated.
Clearly Juan Luis was a man of very little honour, but of much
sensitiveness in his work and he was also a great layer of women.
But Blanquet was serious and very quiet and completely incapable
of telling an untruth. And I tell you that I smelled death on your
colleague who was here/

‘I do not believe it,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Also you said that
Blanquet smelled this just before the paseo. Just before the bull-
fight started. Now this was a successful action here of you and
Kashkin and the train. He was not killed in that. How could you
smell it then?’

‘That has nothing to do -with it,’ Pilar explained. ‘In the last
season of Ignacio Sanchez Mejias he smelled so strongly of death
that many refused to sit with him in the cafe. Ail gipsies knew of
this/

‘After the death such things are invented/ Robert Jordan ar-
gued. ‘Everyone knew that Sanchez Mejias was on the road to a
cornada because he had been too long out of training, because his
style was heavy and dangerous, and because his strength and the
agility in his legs were gone and his reflexes no longer as they had
been/

‘Certainly/ Pilar told him. ‘All of that is true. But all the gipsies
knew also that he smelled of death and when he would come into
the Villa Rosa you would see such people as Ricardo and Felipe
Gonzalez leaving by the small door behind the bar/

‘They probably owed him money,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘It is possible/ Pilar said. ‘Very possible. But they also smelled
the thing and all knew of it/

‘What she says is true, IngUs / the gipsy, Rafael, said, ‘It is a
well-known thing among us/

‘I believe nothing of it/ Robert Jordan said.

‘Listen, . IngUsJ Anselmo began. ‘I am against all such

243

wizardry. But this Pilar has the fame of being very advanced in
such things/

‘But what does it smell like?* Fernando asked. ‘What odour
has it? If there be an odour it must be a definite odour.*

‘You want to know, Fernandito?* Pilar smiled at him. ‘You
think that you could smell it?*

‘If it actually exists why should I not smell it as well as another?’

‘Why not?’ Pilar was making fun of him, her big hands folded
across her knees. ‘Has thou ever been aboard a ship, Fernando?’

‘Nay. And I would not wish to.*

‘Then thou might not recognize it. For part of it is the smell
that comes when, on a ship, there is a storm and the portholes are
closed up. Put your nose against the brass handle of a screwed-
tight porthole on a rolling ship that is swaying under you so that
you are faint and hollow in the stomach and you have a part of
that smell.*

‘It would be impossible for me to recognize because I will go on
no ship,* Fernando said.

‘I have been on ships, several times,* Pilar said. ‘Both to go to
Mexico and to Venezuela.*

‘What’s the rest of it?* Robert Jordan asked. Pilar looked at him
mockingly, remembering now, proudly, her voyages.

‘All right, Ingles . Learn. That’s the thing. Learn. All right.
After that of the ship you must go down the hill in Madrid to the
Puente de Toledo early in the morning to the matadero and stand
there on the wet paving when there is a fog from the Manzanares
and wait for the old women who go before daylight to drink the
blood of the beasts that are slaughtered. When such an old woman
comes out of the matadero , holding her shawl around her, with
her face grey and her eyes hollow, and the whiskers of age on her
chin, and on her cheeks, set in the waxen white of her face as the
sprouts grow from the seed of a bean, not bristles, but pale sprouts
in the death of her face; put your arms tight around her, IngUs ,
and hold her to you and kiss her on the mouth and you will know
the second part that odour is made of.’

‘That one has taken my appetite,* the gipsy said. ‘That of the
sprouts' was too much.*

‘Do you want to hear some more?’ Pilar asked Robert Jordan.

‘Surely,’ he said. ‘If it is necessary for one to learn let us learn.’

‘That of the sprouts in the face of the old women sickens me,’
244

the gipsy said. ‘Why should that occur in old women, Pilar? With
us it is not so.*

‘Nay,* Pilar mocked at him. ‘With us the old woman, who was
so slender in her youth, except o £ course for the perpetual bulge
that is the mark of her husband’s favour, that every gipsy pushes
always before her — *

‘Do not speak thus,’ Rafael said. ‘It is ignoble.*

‘So thou art hurt,’ Pilar said. ‘Hast thou ever seen a gitana who
was not about to have, or just to have had, a child? *

‘Thou.*

‘Leave it,* Pilar said. ‘There is no one who cannot be hurt.
What I was saying is that age brings its own form of ugliness to
all. There is no need to detail it. But if the IngUs must learn that
odour that he covets to recognize he must go to the matadero early
in the morning.*

‘I will go,* Robert Jordan said. ‘But I will get the odour as they
pass without kissing one. I fear the sprouts, too, as Rafael does.*

‘Kiss one,’ Pilar said. ‘Kiss one, Ingles , for thy knowledge’s sake
and then, with this in thy nostrils, walk back up into the city and
when thou seest a refuse pail with dead flowers in it plunge thy
nose deep into it and inhale so that scent mixes with those thou
hast already in thy nasal passages.*

‘Now have I done it,* Robert Jordan said. ‘What flowers were

they?’

‘Chrysanthemums.’

‘Continue,* Robert Jordan said. ‘I smell them.’

‘Then,’ Pilar went on, ‘it is important that the day be in
autumn with rain, or at least some fog, or early winter even and
now thou shouldst continue to walk through the city and down
the Calle de Salud, smelling what thou wilt smell where they are
sweeping out the casas de putas and emptying the slop jars into
the drains and, with this odour of love’s labour lost mixed sweetly
with soapy water and cigarette butts only faintly reaching thy
nostrils, thou shouldst go on to the Jardm Botanico where at night
those girls who can no longer work in the houses do their work
against the iron gates of the park and the iron picketed fences and
upon the sidewalks. It is there in the shadow of the trees against
the iron railings that they will perform all that a man wishes;
from the simplest requests at a remuneration of ten centimes up
to a peseta for that great act that we are born to and there, on a
245

bough bed to hoid the branches in place and pegged it firm with
two pointed pieces of wood he split from the edge of the slab.

Then he carried the slab and the axe back into the cave, duck-
ing under the blanket as he came in, and leaned them both against
the wall.

‘What do you do outside?’ Pilar had asked.

‘I made a bed.’

‘Don’t cut pieces from my new shelf for thy bed.*

‘I am sorry.’

‘It has no importance,’ she said. ‘There are more slabs at the
sawmill. What sort of bed hast thou made?’

‘As in my country.’

‘Then sleep well in it,’ she had said and Robert Jordan had
opened one of the packs and pulled the robe out and replaced
those things wrapped in it back in the pack and carried the robe
out, ducking under the blanket again, and spread it over the
boughs so that the closed end of the robe was against the pole that
was pegged cross-wise at the foot of the bed. The open head of the
robe was protected by the rock wall of the cliff. Then he went
back into the cave for his packs but Pilar said, ‘They can sleep
with me as last night.’

‘Will you not have sentries?’ he asked. ‘The night is clear and
the storm is over.’

‘Fernando goes,’ Pilar said.

Maria was in the back of the cave and Robert Jordan could not
see her.

‘Good night to everyone,’ he had said. ‘I am going to sleep.’

Of the others, who were laying out blankets and bedrolls on the
floor in front of the cooking fire, pushing back the slab tables and
the rawhide-covered stools to make sleeping space, Primitive and
Andres looked up and said, i Buenas nodes . 9

Anselmo was already asleep in a corner, rolled in his blanket
and his cape, not even his nose showing. Pablo was asleep in his
chair.

‘Do you want a sheep hide for thy bed?’ Pilar asked Robert
Jordan softly.

‘Nay,’ he said. ‘Thank thee. I do not need it.’

‘Sleep well,’ she said. ‘I will respond for thy material.’

Fernando had gone out with him and stood a moment where
Robert Jordan had spread the sleeping robe.

248

‘You have a curious idea to sleep in the open, Don Roberto/
he said, standing there in the dark, muffled in his blanket cape,
his carbine slung over his shoulder.

‘I am accustomed to it. Good night/

‘Since you are accustomed to it/

‘When are you relieved ? '

‘At four/

‘There is much cold between now and then/

‘I am accustomed to it/ Fernando said.

‘Since, then, you are accustomed to it Robert Jordan said
politely.

‘Yes/ Fernando agreed. ‘Now I must get up there. Good night,
Don Roberto/

‘Good night, Fernando/

Then he had made a pillow of the things he took off and gotten
into the robe and then lain and waited, feeling the spring of the
boughs under the flannelly, feathered lightness of the robe
warmth, watching the mouth of the cave across the snow; feeling
his heart beat as he waited.

The night was clear and his head felt as clear and cold as the
air. He smelled the odour of the pine boughs under him, the
piney smell of the crushed needles, and the sharper odour of # the
resinous sap from the cut limbs. Pilar, he thought. Pilar and the
smell of death. This is the smell I love. This and fresh-cut clover,
the crushed sage as you ride after cattle, wood-smoke, and the
burning leaves of autumn. That must be the odour of nostalgia,
the smell of the smoke from the piles of raked leaves burning in
the streets in the fall in Missoula. Which would you rather smell?
Sweet grass the Indians used in their baskets? Smoked leather?
The odour of the ground in the spring after rain? The smell of
the sea as you walk through the gorse on a headland in Galicia?
Or the wind from the land as you come in toward Cuba in the
dark? That was the odour of the cactus flowers, mimosa, and the
sea-grape shrubs. Or would you rather smell frying bacon in the
morning when you are hungry? Or coffee in the morning? Qr a
Jonathan apple as you bit into it? Ora cider mill in the grinding,
or bread fresh from the oven? You must be hungry, he thought,
and he lay on his side and watched the entrance of the cave in the
light that the stars reflected from the snow.

Someone came out from under the blanket and he could see
249

whoever It was standing by the break in the rock that made the
entrance. Then he heard a slithering sound in the snow and then
whoever it was ducked down and went back in.

I suppose she won’t come until they are all asleep, he thought.
It is a waste of time. The night is half gone. Oh Maria. Come
now quickly, Maria, for there is little time. He heard the soft
sound of snow falling from a branch on to the snow on the
ground. A little wind was rising. He felt it on his face. Suddenly
he felt a panic that she might not come. The wind rising now re-
minded him how soon it would be morning. More snow fell from
the branches as he heard the wind now moving the pine tops.

Come now, Maria. Please come here now quickly, he thought.
Oh, come here now. Do not wait. There is no importance any
more to your waiting until they are asleep.

Then he saw her coming out from under the blanket that cov-
ered the cave mouth. She stood there a moment and he knew it
was she but he could not see what she was doing. He whistled a
low whistle and she was still at the cave mouth doing something
in the darkness of the rock shadow. Then she came running,
carrying something in her hands, and he saw her running long-
legged through the snow. Then she was kneeling by the robe, her
he^d pushed hard against him, slapping the snow from her feet.
She kissed him and handed him her bundle.

Tut it with thy pillow,’ she said. ‘I took these off there to save
time.*

‘ ‘You came barefoot through the snow?*

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and wearing only my wedding shirt.’

He held her close and tight in his arms and she rubbed her head
against his chin.

‘Avoid the feet,’ she said. ‘They are very cold, Roberto.’

Tut them here and warm them.’

‘Nay,’ she said. ‘They will warm quickly. But say quickly now
that you love me/

‘I love thee/

‘Good, Good. Good/

‘I love thee, little rabbit.*

‘Do you love my wedding shirt?’

‘It is the same onefes always/

‘Yes. As last night. It is my wedding shirt,’

Tut thy feet here/

250

‘Nay, that would be abusive. They will warm of themselves.
They are warm to me. It is only that the snow has made them
cold toward thee. Say it again.’

‘I love thee, my litde rabbit.’

‘I love thee, too, and I am thy wife.*

‘Were they asleep ? *

‘No,’ she said. ‘But I could support it no longer,
portance has it?’

‘None,’ he said, and felt her against him, slim
warmly lovely. ‘No other thing has importance.’

‘Put thy hand on my head,’ she said, ‘and then
can kiss thee.’

‘Was it well?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Take off thy wedding shirt.’

‘You think I should?’

‘Yes, if thou wilt not be cold.*

‘ Que va, cold. I am on fire.*

‘I, too. But afterwards thou wilt not be cold?’

‘No. Afterwards we will be as one animal of the forest and be
so close that neither one can tell that one of us is one and not the
other. Can you not feel my heart be your heart?’

‘Yes. There is no difference.’

‘Now, feel. I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other.
And I love thee, oh, I love thee so. Are we not truly one? Canst
thou not feel it? ’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is true.’

‘And feel now. Thou hast no heart but mine.*

‘Nor any other legs, nor feet, nor of the body.’

‘But we are different,* she said. ‘I would have us exactly the
same.’

‘You do not mean that.’

‘Yes I do. I do. That is a thing I had to tell thee.’

‘You do not mean that.’

‘Perhaps I do not,’ she said speaking sofdy with her lips against
his shoulder. ‘But I wished to say it. Since we are different I am
glad that thou art Roberto and I Maria. But if thou should ever
wish to change I would be glad to change. I would be thee be-
cause I love thee so.’ *

‘I do not wish to change. It is better to be one and each one to
be the one he is.’

And what im-
and long and
let me see if I

251

‘But we will be one now and there will never be a separate one,’
Then she said, T will be thee when thou art not there. Oh, I love
thee so and I must care well for thee.’

‘Maria/

‘Yes/

‘Maria/

‘Yes/

‘Maria/

‘Oh, yes. Please/

‘Art thou not cold?’

‘Oh, no. Pull the robe over thy shoulders/

‘Maria/

‘I cannot speak/

‘Oh, Maria. Maria. Maria/

Then afterwards, close, with the night cold outside, in the long
warmth of the robe, her head touching his cheek, she lay quiet
and happy against him and then said softly, ‘And thou?’

‘ Como tu> he said.

‘Yes/ she said. ‘But it was not as this afternoon/

‘No/

‘But I loved it more. One does not need to die/

‘ Ojala no / he said. ‘I hope not/

‘I did not mean that/

‘I know. I know what thou meanest. We mean the same/
‘Then why did you say that instead of what I meant?’

‘With a man there is a difference/

‘Then I am glad that we are different/

‘And so am 1/ he said. ‘But I understood about the dying. I
only spoke thus, as a man, from habit. I feel the same as thee/
‘However thou art and however thou speakest is how I would
have thee be/

‘And I love thee and I love thy name, Maria/

‘It is a common name/

‘No/ he said, ‘It is not common/

‘Now should we sleep?’ she said. ‘I could sleep easily/

‘Let us sleep/ he said, and he felt the long light body, warm
against him, comforting against him, abolishing loneliness against
him, magically, by % simple touching of flanks, of shoulders, and
of feet, making an alliance against death with him, and he said,
‘Sleep well, litde long rabbit/

252

She said, ‘I am asleep already.’

‘I am going to sleep/ he said. ‘Sleep well, beloved.’ Then he
was asleep and happy as he slept.

But in the night he woke and held her tight as though she were
all o£ life and it was being taken from him. He held her feeling
she was all of life there was and it was true. But she was sleeping
well and soundly and she did not wake. So he rolled away on to
his side and pulled the robe over her head and kissed her once on
her neck under the robe and then pulled the pistol lanyard up
and put the pistol by his side where he could reach it handily and
then he lay there in the night thinking.

CHAPTER 21

A warm wind came with daylight and he could hear the snow
melting in the trees and the heavy sound of its falling. It was a late
spring morning. He knew with the first breath he drew that the
snow had been only a freak storm in the mountains and it would
be gone by noon. Then he heard a horse coming, the hoofs balled
with the wet snow thumping dully as the horseman trotted. He
heard the noise of a carbine scabbard slapping loosely and die
creak of leather.

‘Maria , 5 he said, and shook the girl’s shoulder to waken her.
‘Keep thyself under the robe/ and he buttoned his shirt with one
hand and held the automatic pistol in the other, loosening the
safety catch with his thumb. He saw the girl’s cropped head dis-
appear with a jerk under the robe and then he saw the horseman
coming through the trees. He crouched now in the robe and hold-
ing the pistol in both hands aimed it at the man as he rode toward
him. He had never seen this man before.

The horseman was almost opposite him now. He was riding a
big grey gelding and he wore a khaki beret, a blanket cape like a
poncho, and heavy black boots. From the scabbard on the right of
his saddle projected the stock and the long oblong clip of a short
automatic rifle. He had a young, hard face and at this moment he
saw Robert Jordan.

He reached his hand down toward the scabbard and as he
swung low, turning and jerking at the scabbard, Robert Jordan

*53

saw the scarlet of the formalized device he wore on the left breast
of his khaki blanket cape.

Aiming at the centre of his chest, a litde lower than the device,
Robert Jordan fired.

The pistol roared in the snowy woods.

The horse plunged as though he had been spurred and the
young man, still tugging at the scabbard, slid over toward the
ground, his right foot caught in the stirrup. The horse broke off
through the trees dragging him, bumping, face downward, and
Robert Jordan stood up holding the pistol now in one hand.

The big grey horse was galloping through the pines. There was
a broad swath in the snow where the man dragged with a scarlet
streak along one side of it. People were coming out of the mouth
of the cave. Robert Jordan reached down and unrolled his trousers
from the pillow and began to put them on.

‘Gerthee dressed/ he said to Maria.

* Overhead he heard the noise of a plane flying very high.
Through the trees he saw where the grey horse had stopped and
was standing, his rider still hanging face down from the stirrup.

‘Go catch that horse/ he called to Primitivo who had started
over toward him. Then, ‘Who was on guard at the top?’

‘Rafael/ Pilar said from the cave. She stood there, her hair still
down her back in two braids.

‘There’s cavalry out/ Robert Jordan said. ‘Get your ‘damned
gun up there/

He heard Pilar call, ‘Agustin/ into the cave. Then she went
into the cave and then two men came running out, one with the
automatic rifle with its tripod swung on his shoulder; the other
with a sackful of the pans.

‘Get up there with them/ Robert Jordan said to Anselmo. ‘You
lie beside the gun and hold the legs still/ he said.

The three of them went up the trail through the woods at a
run.

The sun had not yet come up over the tops of the mountains
and Robert Jordan stood straight buttoning his trousers and tight-
ening his belt, the big pistol hanging from the lanyard on his
wrist. He put the pistol in his holster on his belt and slipped the
knot down on the lanyard and passed the loop over his head.

Somebody will choke you with that sometime, he thought.
Well, this had done it. He took the pistol out of the holster, re-
254

moved the clip, inserted one of the cartridges from the row along-
side of the holster, and shoved the clip back into the butt of the
pistol.

He looked through the trees to where Primitivo, holding the
reins of the horse, was twisting the rider’s foot out of the stirrup.
The body lay face down in the snow and as he watched Primitivo
was going through the pockets.

‘Come on,’ he called, ‘Bring the horse.’

As he knelt to put on his rope-soled shoes, Robert Jordan could
feel Maria against his knees, dressing herself under the robe. She
had no place in his life now.

That cavalryman did not expect anything, he was thinking. He
was not following horse tracks and he was not even properly alert,
let alone alarmed. He was not even following the tracks up to the
post. He must have been one of a patrol scattered out in these hills.
But when the patrol misses him they will follow his tracks here.
Unless the snow melts first, he thought. Unless something hap-*
pens to the patrol.

‘You better get down below, 5 he said to Pablo.

They were all out of the cave now, standing there with the car-
bines and with grenades on their belts. Pilar held a leather bag of
grenades toward Robert Jordan and he took three and put them in
his pocket. He ducked into the cave, found his two packs, opened
the one T&ith the sub-machine gun in it and took out the barrel and
stock, slipped the stock on to the forward assembly and put one
clip into the gun and three in his pockets. He locked the pack and
started for the door. Fve got two pockets full of hardware, he
thought. I hope the seams hold. He came out of the cave and said
to Pablo, ‘I’m going up above. Can Agustin shoot that gun? 5

‘Yes, 5 Pablo said. He was watching Primitivo leading up the
horse.

‘Mira que caballo , 5 he said. ‘Look, what a horse. 5

The big grey was sweating and shivering a little and Robert
Jordan patted him on the withers.

‘I will put him with the others,’ Pablo said.

‘No, 5 Robert Jordan said. ‘He has made tracks into here. He
must make them out. 5

‘True, 5 agreed Pablo. ‘I will ride him out and will hide him
and bring him in when the snow is melted. Thou hast much head
to-day, Ingles J

255

‘Send someone below/ Robert Jordan said. ‘We’ve got to get
up there.’

‘It is not necessary/ Pablo said. ‘Horsemen cannot come that
way. But we can get out, by there and by two other places. It is
better not to make tracks if there are planes coming. Give me the
bota with wine, Pilar/

‘To go of! and get drunk/ Pilar said. ‘Here, take these instead.’
He reached over and put two of the grenades in his pockets.

‘ QuS va, to get drunk/ Pablo said. ‘There is gravity in the
situation. But give me the bota. I do not like to do all this on
water/

He reached his arms up, took the reins, and swung up into the
saddle. He grinned and patted the nervous horse. Robert Jordan
saw him rub his leg along the horse’s flank affectionately.

*Que caballo mas bonito / he said and patted his big grey again.
t Que caballo mas hermoso . Come on. The faster this gets out of
here the better/

He reached down and pulled the light automatic rifle with its
ventilated barrel, really a sub-machine gun built to take the 9 mm.
pistol cartridge, from the scabbard, and looked at it. ‘Look how
they are armed/ he said. ‘Look at modern cavalry/

‘There’s modern cavalry over there on his face/ Robert Jordan
said. 4 Vamonos?

‘Do you, Andre, saddle and hold the horses in readiness. If
you hear firing bring them up to the woods behind the gap. Come
with thy arms and leave the women to hold the horses. Fernando,
see that my sacks are brought also. Above all, that my sacks are
brought carefully. Thou to look after my sacks, too/ he said to
Pilar. ‘Thou to verify that they come with the horses. Vamonos /
he said. ‘Let us go/

‘The Maria and I will prepare all for leaving/ Pilar said. Then
to Robert Jordan, ‘Look at him/ nodding at Pablo on the grey
horse, sitting him in the heavy-thighed herdsman manner, the
horse’s nostrils widening as Pablo replaced the clip in the auto-
matic rifle. ‘See what a horse has done for him.’

‘That I should have two horses/ Robert Jordan said fervently.

‘Danger is thy horse/

‘Then give me a mule/ Robert Jordan grinned.

‘Strip me that/ he said to Pilar and jerked his head toward
where the man lay face down in the snow. ‘And bring everything,

ail the letters and papers, and put them in the outside pocket of
my sack. Everything, understand?’

‘Yes.’

4 Vamonos ,’ he said.

Pablo rode ahead and the two men followed in single file in
order not to track up the snow. Robert Jordan carried the sub-
machine gun muzzle down, carrying it by its forward hand grip.
I wish it took the same ammunition that saddle gun takes, he
thought. But it doesn’t. This is a German gun. This was old
Kashkin’s gun.

The sun was coming over the mountains now. A warm wind
was blowing and the snow was melting. It was a lovely late spring
morning.

Robert Jordan looked back and saw Maria now standing' with
Pilar. Then she came running up the trail. He dropped behind
Primitivo to speak to her.

‘Thou,’ she said. ‘Can I go with thee?’

‘No. Help Pilar.’

She was walking behind him and put her hand on his arm.

Tm coming.’

She kept on walking close behind him.

‘I could hold the legs of the gun in the way thou told
Anselmo.’

‘Thou wilt hold no legs. Neither of guns nor of nothing.’

Walking beside him she reached forward and put her hand in
his pocket.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But take good care of thy wedding shirt.’

‘Kiss me,’ she said, ‘if thou goest.’

‘Thou art shameless,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Totally.’

‘Get thee back now. There is much work to do. We may fight
here if they follow these horse tracks.’

‘Thou,’ she said. ‘Didst thee see what he wore on his chest?’

‘Yes. Why not?’

‘It was the Sacred Heart.’

‘Yes. All the people of Navarre wear it.’

‘And thou shot for that?’

‘No. Below it. Get thee back now.’

‘Thou,’ she said, ‘I saw all.’

257

‘Thou saw nothing. One man. One man from a horse. Vete.
Get thee back.’

‘Say that you love me.*

‘No. Not now.’

‘Not love me now? *

‘ Dejamos . Get thee back. One does not do that and love all at
the same moment.’

‘I want to go to hold the legs of the gun and while it speaks love
thee all in the same moment.’

‘Thou art crazy. Get thee back now.’

‘I am not crazy/ she said. ‘I love thee.'

‘Then get thee back.’

‘Good. I go. And if thou dost not love me, I love thee enough
for both.’

He looked at her and smiled through his thinking.

‘When you hear firing/ he said, ‘come with the horses. Aid the
Pilar with my sacks. It is possible there will be nothing. I hope so.’

‘I go/ she said. ‘Look what a horse Pablo rides.’

The big grey was moving ahead up the trail.

‘Yes. But go.’

‘I go/

Her list, clenched tight in his pocket, beat hard against his
thigh. He looked at her and saw there were tears in her eyes. She
pulled her list out of his pocket and put both arms tight around
his neck and kissed him.

‘I go,’ she said. ‘ Me voy. I go/

He looked back and saw her standing there, the first morning
sunlight on her brown face and the cropped, tawny, burned-gold
hair. She lifted her fist at him and turned and walked back down
the trail, her head down.

Primitivo turned around and looked after her.

‘If she did not have her hair cut so short she would be a pretty
girl/ he said.

‘Yes/ Robert Jordan said. He was thinking of something else.

‘How is she in the bed?’ Primitivo asked.

‘What?’

‘In the bed/

‘Watch thy mouth.'

‘One should not be offended when

‘Leave it/ Robert Jordan said. He was looking at the position.

258

CHAPTER 22

‘Cut me pine branches/ Robert Jordan said to Priraitivo, ‘and
bring them quickly/

‘I do not like the gun there/ he said to Agustin.

‘Why?’

‘Place it over there/ Robert Jordan pointed, ‘and later I will tell
thee/

‘Here, thus. Let me help thee. Here/ he said, then squatted
down.

He looked out across the narrow oblong, noting the height of
the rocks on either side.

‘It must be farther/ he said, ‘farther out. Good. Here. That will
do until it can be done properly. There. Put the stones there. Here
is one. Put another there at the side. Leave room for the muzzle
to swing. The stone must be farther to this side. Anselmo, Get
thee down to the cave and bring me an axe. Quickly/

‘Have you never had a proper emplacement for the gun?’ he
said to Agustin.

‘We always placed it here/

‘Kashkin never said to put it there?’

‘No. The gun was brought after he left/

‘Did no one bring it who knew how to use it?’

‘No. It was brought by porters/

‘What a way to do things/ Robert Jordan said. ‘It was just
given to you without instruction ? ’

‘Yes, as a gift might be given. One for us and one for El Sordo.
Four men brought them. Anselmo guided them/

‘It was a wonder they did not lose them with four men to cross
the lines/

‘I thought so, too/ Agustin said. ‘I thought those who sent them
meant for them to be lost. Rut Anselmo brought them well/

‘You know how to handle it ? ’

‘Yes. I have experimented. I know. Pablo knows. Primitivo
knows. So does Fernando. We have made a study of taking it
apart and putting it together on the table in the cave. Once we
259

had it apart and could not get it together for two days. Since then
we have not had it apart.*

‘Does it shoot now ? *

‘Yes. But we do not let the gipsy nor others frig with it.’

‘You see? From there it was useless/ he said. ‘Look. Those
rocks which should protect your flanks give cover to those who
will attack you. With such a gun you must seek a flatness over
which to fire. Also you must take them sideways. See? Look
now. All that is dominated.’

‘I see/ said Agustin. ‘But we have never fought in defence ex-
cept when our town was taken. At the train there were soldiers
with the mdquina .’

‘Then we will all learn together/ Robert Jordan said. ‘There are
a few things to observe. Where is the gipsy who should be here?*

‘I do not know.’

‘Where is it possible for him to be?’

‘I do not know/

Pablo had ridden out through the pass and turned once and
ridden in a circle across the level space at the top that was the field
of fire for the automatic rifle. Now Robert Jordan watched him
riding down the slope alongside the tracks the horse had left when
he was ridden in. He disappeared in the trees turning off to the
left.

‘I hope he doesn’t run right into cavalry/ Robert Jordan
thought. ‘I’m afraid we’d have him right here in our laps.’

Primitivo brought the pine branches and Robert Jordan stuck
them through the snow into the unfrozen earth, arching them
over the gun from either side.

‘Bring more/ he said. ‘There must be cover for the two men
who serve it. This is not good but it will serve until the axe comes.
Listen/ he said, ‘if you hear a plane lie flat wherever thou art in
the shadows of the rocks. I am here with the gun.’

Now with the sun up and the warm wind blowing it was
pleasant on the side of the rocks where the sun shone. Four horses,
Robert Jordan thought. The two women and me, Anselmo,
Primitivo, Fernando, Agustin, what the hell is the name of the
other brother? That’s eight. Not counting the gipsy. Makes nine.
Plus Pablo gone with one horse makes ten. Andres is his name.
The other brother. Plus the other Eladio. Makes ten. That’s not
one-half a horse apiece. Three men can hold this and four can get
260

away. Five with Pablo. That’s two left over. Three with Eladio.
Where the hell is he ?

God knows what will happen to Sordo to-day if they picked
up the trail of those horses in the snow. That was tough; the snow
stopping that way. But it melting to-day will even things up. But
not for Sordo. I’m afraid it’s too late to even it up for Sordo.

If we can last through to-day and not have to fight we can swing
the whole show to-morrow with what we have. I know we can.
Not well, maybe. Not as it should be, to be foolproof, not as we
would have done; but using everybody we can swing it. If we
don't have to fight to-day. God help us if we have to fight to-day.

I don’t know any place better to lay up in the meantime than
this. If we move now we only leave tracks. This is as good a place
as any and if the worst gets to be the worst there are three ways
out of this place. There is the dark then to come and from wher-
ever we are in these hills, I can reach and do the bridge at day-
light. I don’t know why I worried about it before. It seems easy
enough now. I hope they get the planes up on time for once. I
certainly hope that. To-morrow is going to be a day with dust on
the road.

Well, to-day will be very interesting or very dull. Thank God
we’ve got that cavalry mount out and away from here. I don’t
think even if they ride up here they will go in the way those tracks
are now. They’ll think he stopped and circled and they’ll pick up
Pablo’s tracks, I wonder where the old swine will go. He’ll prob-
ably leave tracks like an old bull elk spooking out of the country
and work way up and when the snow melts circle back below.
That horse certainly did things for him. Of course he may have
just mucked off with him too. Well, he should be able to take care
of himself. He’s been doing this a long time. I wouldn’t trust him
farther than you can throw Mount Everest, though.

I suppose it’s smarter to use these rocks and build a good blind
for this gun than to make a proper emplacement for it. You’d be
digging and get caught with your pants down if they come or if
the planes come. She will hold this, the way she is, as long as it is
any use to hold it, and anyway I can’t stay to fight. I have to get
out of here with that stuff and I’m going to take Anselmo with
me. Who would stay to cover us while we got away if we have to
fight here?

Just then, while he was watching all of the country that was
261

visible, he saw the gipsy coming through the rocks to the left. He
was walking with a loose, high-hipped, sloppy swing, his carbine
was slung on his back, his brown face was grinning, and he
carried two big hares, one in each hand. He carried them by the
legs, heads swinging.

‘ Hola , Roberto,* he called cheerfully.

Robert Jordan put his hand to his mouth, and the gipsy looked
startled. He slid over behind the rocks to where Robert Jordan
was crouched beside the brush-shielded automatic rifle. He
crouched down and laid the hares in the snow. Robert Jordan
looked up at him.

‘You hi jo de la gran putaP he said softly. ‘Where the obscenity
have you been?*

1 tracked them,’ the gipsy said. ‘I got them both. They had
made love in the snow.*

‘And thy post?’

‘It was not for long,’ the gipsy whispered. ‘What passes? Is
there an alarm?*

‘There is cavalry out.*

‘{RediosP the gipsy said. ‘Hast thou seen them?*

‘There is one at the camp now,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘He came
for breakfast.*

‘I thought I heard a shot or something like one,* the gipsy said.
‘I obscenity in the milk ! Did he come through here?*

‘Here. Thy post.’

t fAy > mi madreP the gipsy said. ‘I am a poor, unlucky man.*
‘If thou were not a gipsy, I would shoot thee.’

‘No, Roberto. Don’t say that. I am sorry. It was the hares. Be-
fore daylight I heard the male thumping in the snow. You cannot
imagine what a debauch they were engaged in. I went toward
the noise but they were gone. I followed the tracks in the snow
and high up I found them together and slew them both. Feel the
fatness of the two for this time of year. Think what the Pilar will
do with those two. I am sorry, Roberto, as sorry as thee. Was the
cavalryman killed?’

‘Yes.*

‘By thee?*

‘Yes.*

^ l Q tie tioP the gipsy said in open flattery. ‘Thou art a veritable
phenomenon.*

262

‘Thy mother !’ Robert Jordan said. He could not help grinning
at the gipsy. ‘Take thy hares to camp and bring us up some break-
fast.’

He put a hand out and felt of the hares that lay limp, long,
heavy, thick-furred, big-footed, and long-eared in the snow, their
round dark eyes open.

‘They are fat,’ he said.

‘Fat !’ the gipsy said. ‘There’s a tub of lard on the ribs of each
one. In my life have I never dreamed of such hares.’

‘Go then,’ Robert Jordan said, ‘and come quickly with the
breakfast and bring to me the documentation of that requete . Ask
Pilar for it.*

‘You are not angry with me, Roberto?*

‘Not angry. Disgusted that you should leave your post. Sup-
pose it had been a troop of cavalry?’

‘RediosJ the gipsy said. ‘How reasonable you are.’

‘Listen to me. You cannot leave a post again like that. Never. I
do not speak of shooting lightly.’

‘Of course not. And another thing. Never would such an op
portunity as the two hares present itself again. Not in the life of
one man.’

7 Anda /* Robert Jordan said. ‘And hurry back.’

The gipsy picked up the two hares and slipped back through
the rocks and Robert Jordan looked out across the Rat opening
and the slopes of the hill below, A crow circled overhead and
then lit in a pine tree below. Another crow joined it and Robert
Jordan, watching them, thought : those are my sentinels. As long
as those are quiet there is no one coming through the trees.

The gipsy, he thought. He is truly worthless. He has no politi-
cal development, nor any discipline, and you could not rely on
him for anything. But I need him for to-morrow. I have a use for
him to-morrow. It’s odd to see a gipsy in a war. They should be
exempted like conscientious objectors. Or as the physically and
mentally unfi t. They are worthless. But conscientious objectors
weren’t exempted in this war. No one was exempted. It came to
one and all alike. Well, it had come here now to this lazy outfit.
They had it now.

Agustin and Primitivo came up with the brush and Robert
Jordan built a good blind for the automatic rifle, a blind that
would conceal the gun from the air and that would look natural
263

from the forest. He showed them where to place a man high in
the rocks to the right where he could see all the country below
and to the right, and another where he could command the only
stretch where the left wall might be climbed.

‘Do not fire if you see anyone from there/ Robert Jordan said.
‘Roll a rock down as a warning, a small rock, and signal to us
with thy rifle, thus/ he lifted the rifle and held it over his head as
though guarding it. ‘Thus for numbers/ he lifted the rifle up
and down. ‘If they are dismounted point thy rifle muzzle at the
ground. Thus. Do not fire from there until thou hearest the
mdquina fire. Shoot at a man’s knees when you shoot from that
height. If you hear me whistle twice on this whistle get down,
keeping behind cover, and come to these rocks where the mdquina
is/

Primitive raised the rifle.

‘I understand/ he said. ‘It is very simple.’

‘Send first the small rock as a warning and indicate the direc-
tion and the number. See that you are not seen.’

‘Yes/ Primitivo said. ‘If I can throw a grenade?’

‘Not until the mdquina has spoken. It may be that cavalry will
come searching for their comrade and still not try to enter. They
may follow the tracks of Pablo. We do not want combat if it can
be avoided. Above all that we should avoid it. Now get up there.’

‘ Me voyj Primitivo said, and climbed up into the high rocks
with his carbine.

‘Thou, Agustin/ Robert Jordan said. ‘What do you know of
the gun?’

Agustin squatted there, tall, black, stubbly-jowelled, with his
sunken eyes and thin mouth and his big work-worn hands.

*Pues, to load it. To aim it. To shoot it. Nothing more.’

‘You must not fire until they are within fifty metres and only
when you are sure they will be coming into the pass which leads
to the cave/ Robert Jordan said.

‘Yes. How far is that ? ’

‘That rock/

‘If there is an officer shoot him first. Then move the gun on to
the others. Move very slowly. It takes little movement. I will teach
Fernando to tap it. Hold it tight so that it does not jump and sight
carefully and do not fire more than six shots at a time if you can
help it. For the fire of the gun jumps upward. But each tim e fire
264

at one man and then move from him to another. At a man on a
horse, shoot at his belly.’

‘Yes.’

‘One man should hold the tripod still so that the gun does not
jump. Thus. He will load the gun for thee.’

‘And where will you be?’

‘I will be here on the left. Above, where I can see all and I will
cover thy left with this small mdquina. Here. If they should come
it would be possible to make a massacre. But you must not fire
until they are that close.’

‘I believe that we could make a massacre. jMenuda matanzaV

‘But I hope they do not come.’

‘If it were not for thy bridge we could make a massacre here
and get out.*

‘It would avail nothing. That would serve no purpose. The
bridge is a part of a plan to win the war. This would be nothing.
This would be an incident. A nothing.’

‘ Que va , nothing. Every fascist dead is a fascist less.*

‘Yes. But with this of the bridge we can take Segovia. The
Capital of a Province. Think of that. It will be the first one we
will take,’

‘Thou believest in this seriously? That we can take Segovia?’

‘Yes. It is possible with the bridge blown correcdy.*

‘I would like to have the massacre here and the bridge, too.’

‘Thou hast much appetite,’ Robert Jordan told him.

All this time he had been watching the crows. Now he saw one
was watching something. The bird cawed and flew up. But the
other crow still stayed in the tree. Robert Jordan looked up to-
ward Primitivo’s place high in the rocks. He saw him watching
out over the country below but he made no signal. Robert Jordan
leaned forward and worked the lock on the automatic rifle, saw
the round in the chamber, and let the lock down. The crow was
still there in the tree. The other circled wide over the snow and
then settled again. In the sun and the warm wind the snow was
falling from the laden branches of the pines.

‘I have a massacre for thee for to-morrow morning,’ Robert
Jordan said. ‘It is necessary to exterminate the post at the saw-
mill.’

‘I am ready,’ Agustin said. ‘ Estoy listo *

‘Also the post at the roadmender’s hut below the bridge.’

265

Tor the one or for the other,’ Agustln said. ‘Or for both.’

‘Not for both. They will be done at the same time,’ Robert
Jordan said.

‘Then for either one,’ Agustin said. ‘Now for a long time have
I wished for action in this war. Pablo has rotted us here with
inaction.’

Anselmo came up with the axe.

‘Do you wish more branches?’ he asked. ‘To me it seems well
hidden.’

‘Not branches,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Two small trees that we
can plant here and there to make it look more natural. There are
not enough trees here for it to be truly natural.’

‘I will bring them.’

‘Cut them well back, so the stumps cannot be seen.’

Robert Jordan heard the axe sounding in the woods behind
him. He looked up at Primitivo above in the rocks and he looked
down at the pines below across the clearing. The one crow was
still there. Then he heard the first high, throbbing murmur of a
plane coming. He looked up and saw it high and tiny and silver
in the sun, seeming hardly to move in the high sky.

‘They cannot see us,’ he said to Agustln. ‘But it is well to keep
down. That is the second observation plane to-day.’

‘And those of yesterday?’ Agustin asked.

‘They are like a bad dream now,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘They must be at Segovia. The bad dream waits there to be-
come a reality.’

The plane was out of sight now over the mountains but the
sound of its motors still persisted.

As Robert Jordan looked, he saw the crow fly up. He flew
straight away through the trees without cawing.

CHAPTER 23

‘Get thee down,’ Robert Jordan whispered to Agustin, and he
turned his head and flicked his hand Down , Down , to Anselmo
who was coming through the gap with a pine tree, carrying it
over his shoulder like a Christmas tree. He saw the old man drop
his pine tree behind a rock and then he was out of sight in the
266

rocks and Robert Jordan was looking ahead across the open space
toward the timber. He saw nothing and heard nothing but he
could feel his heart pounding and then he heard the clack of
stone on stone and the leaping, dropping clicks of a small rock
falling. He turned his head to the right and looking up saw
Primitive’s rifle raised and lowered four times horizontally. Then
there was nothing more to see but the white stretch in front of
him with the circle of horse tracks and the timber beyond.

‘Cavalry,’ he said softly to Agustm.

Agustm looked at him and his dark, sunken cheeks widened at
their base as he grinned, Robert Jordan noticed he was sweating.
He reached over and put his hand on his shoulder. His hand w as
still there as they saw the four horsemen ride out of the timber
and he felt the muscles in Agustm’s back twitch under his hand.

One horseman was ahead and three rode behind. The one ahead
was following the horse tracks. He looked down as he rode. The
other three came behind him, fanned out through the timber.
They were all watching carefully. Robert Jordan felt his heart
beating against the snowy ground as he lay, his elbows spread
wide and watched them over the sights of the automatic rifle.

The man who was leading rode along the trail to where Pablo
had circled and stopped. The others rode up to him and they ah
stopped.

Robert Jordan saw them clearly over the blued steel barrel of
the automatic rifle. He saw the faces of the men, the sabres hang-
ing, the sweat-darkened flanks of the horses, and the cone-like
slope of the khaki capes, and the Navarrese slant of the khaki
berets. The leader turned his horse directly toward the opening
in the rocks where the gun was placed and Robert Jordan saw his
young sun- and wind-darkened face, his close-set eyes, hawk
nose, and the over-long wedge-shaped chin.

Sitting his horse there, the horse’s chest toward Robert Jordan,
the horse’s head high, the butt of the slight automatic rifle pro-
jecting forward from the scabbard at the right of the saddle, the
leader pointed toward the opening where the gun was.

Robert Jordan sunk his elbows into the ground and looked
along the barrel at the four riders stopped there in the snow.
Three of them had their automatic rifles out. Two carried them
across the pommels of their saddles. The other sat his horse with
the rifle swung out to the right, the butt resting against his hip.

267

You hardly ever see them at such range, he thought. Not along
the barrel of one of these do you see them like this. Usually the
rear sight is raised and they seem miniatures of men and you have
hell to make it carry up there; or they come running, flopping,
running, and you beat a slope with fire or bar a certain street, or
keep it on the windows; or far away you see them marching on a
road. Only at the trains do you see them like this. Only then are
they like now, and with four of these you can make them scatter.
Over the gun sights, at this range, it makes them twice the size
of men.

Thou, he thought, looking at the wedge of the front sight
placed now firm in the slot of the rear sight, the top of the wedge
against the centre of the leader’s chest, a little to the right of the
scarlet device that showed bright in the morning sun against the
khaki cape. Thou, he thought, thinking in Spanish now and
pressing his fingers forward against the trigger guard to keep it
away from where it would bring the quick, shocking, hurtling
rush from the automatic rifle. Thou, he thought again, thou art
dead now in thy youth. And thou, he thought, and thou, and
thou. But let it not happen. Do not let it happen.

He felt Agustfn beside him start to cough, felt him hold it,
choke, and swallow. Then, as he looked along the oiled blue of
the barrel out through the opening between the branches, his
fingers still pressed forward against the trigger guard, he saw
the leader turn his horse and point into the timber where Pablo’s
trail led. The four of them trotted into the timber and Agustfn
said softly, *; CabronesV

Robert Jordan looked behind him at the rocks where Anselmo
had dropped the tree.

The gipsy, Rafael, was coming toward them through the rocks,
carrying a pair of cloth saddlebags, his rifle slung on his back.
Robert Jordan waved him down and the gipsy ducked out of
sight.

‘We could have killed all four,* Agustfn said quietly. He was
still wet with sweat.

‘Yes,’ Robert Jordan whispered. ‘But with the firing who
knows what might have come?’

Just then he heard the noise of another rock falling and he
looked around quickly. But both the gipsy and Anselmo were out
of sight. He looked at his wrist- watch and then up to where
268

Primitive* was raising and lowering his rifle in what seemed an
infinity of short jerks. Pablo has forty-five minutes 5 start, Robert
Jordan thought, and then he heard the noise of a body of cavalry
coming.

‘ No te apuresy he whispered to Agustln. ‘Do not worry. They
will pass as the others . 5

They came into sight trotting along the edge of the timber in
column of twos, twenty mounted men, armed and uniformed as
the others had been, their sabres swinging, their carbines in their
holsters; and then they went down into the timber as the others
had.

' Tu ves ?’ Robert Jordan said to Agustln. ‘Thou seest ? 5

‘There were many , 5 Agustln said.

‘These would we have had to deal with if we had destroyed the
others , 5 Robert Jordan said very sofdy. His heart had quieted now
and his shirt felt wet on his chest from the melting snow. There
was a hollow feeling in his chest.

The sun was bright 'on the snow and it was melting fast. He
could see it hollowing away from the tree trunks and just ahead
of the gun, before his eyes, the snow surface was damp and
lacily fragile as the heat of the sun melted the top and the
warmth of the earth breathed warmly up at the snow that lay
upon it.

Robert Jordan looked up at Primitive’s post and saw him signal,
‘Nothing , 5 crossing his two hands, palms down.

Anselmo’s head showed above a rock and Robert Jordan
motioned him up. The old man slipped from rock to rock until
he crept up and lay down flat beside the gun.

‘Many , 5 he said. ‘Many ! 5

‘I do not need the trees , 5 Robert Jordan said to him. ‘There is
no need for further forestal improvement . 5

Both Anselmo and Agustln grinned.

‘This has stood scrutiny well and it would be dangerous to
plant trees now because those people will return and perhaps they
are not stupid . 5

He felt the need to talk that, with him, was the sign that there
had just been much danger. He could always tell how bad it had
been by the strength of the desire to talk that came after.

‘It was a good blind, eh ? 5 he said.

‘Good , 5 said Agustln. ‘To obscenity with all fascism good. We
269

could have killed the four of them. Didst thou see?’ he said to
Anselmo.

‘I saw.*

‘Thou/ Robert Jordan said to Anselmo. ‘Thou must go to the
post of yesterday or another good post of thy selection to watch
the road and report on all movement as of yesterday. Already we
are late in that. Stay until dark. Then come in and we will send
another.*

‘But the tracks that I will make?*

‘Go from below as soon as the snow is gone. The road will be
muddied by the snow. Note if there has been much traffic of
trucks or if there are tank tracks in the softness on the road. That
is all we can tell until you are there to observe.*

‘With your permission? * the old man asked,

‘Surely/

‘With your permission, would it not be better for me to go into
La Granja and inquire there what passed last night and arrange
for one to observe to-day thus in the manner you have taught me?
Such a one could report to-night, or, better, I could go again to
La Granja for the report.’

‘Have you no fear of encountering cavalry?’

‘Not when the snow is gone/

‘Is there someone in La Granja capable of this? ?

‘Yes. Of this, yes. It would be a woman. There are various
women of trust in La Granja/

‘I believe it/ Agustin said. ‘More, I know it, and several who
serve for other purposes. You do not wish me to go? *

‘Let the old man go. You understand this gun and the day is
not over/

‘I will go when the snow melts/ Anselmo said. ‘And the snow
is melting fast/

‘What think you of their chance of catching Pablo?* Robert
Jordan asked Agustin.

‘Pablo is smart/ Agustin said, ‘Do men catch a wise stag with-
out hounds?’

‘Sometimes/ Robert Jordan said.

‘Not Pablo/ Agustin said. ‘Clearly, he is only a garbage of what
he once was. But it is not for nothing that he is alive and com-
fortable in these hills and able to drink himself to death while
there are so many others that have died against a wall/

2 7 °

‘Is he as smart as they say?’

‘He is much smarter.*

‘He has not seemed of great ability here.*

‘jComo que no? If he were not of great ability he would have
died last night. It seems to me you do not understand politics,
Ingles, nor guerrilla warfare. In politics and this other the first
thing is to continue to exist. Look how he continued to exist last
night. And the quantity of dung he ate both from me and from
thee.*

Now that Pablo was back in the movements of the unit, Robert
Jordan did not wish to talk against him and as soon as he had
uttered it he regretted saying the thing about his ability. He knew
himself how smart Pablo was. It was Pablo who had seen in-
stantly all that was wrong with the orders for the destruction of
the bridge. He had made the remark only from dislike and he
knew as he made it that it was wrong. It was part of the talking
too much after a strain. So now he dropped the matter and said
to Anselmo, ‘And to go into La Granja in daylight?*

‘It is not bad/ the old man said. ‘I will not go with a military
band.’

‘Nor with a bell around his neck/ Agustm sard. ‘Nor carrying
a banner.*

‘How will you go ? *

‘Above and down through the forest.*

‘But if they pick you up.*

‘I have papers.*

‘So have we all but thou must eat the wrong ones quickly.*
Anselmo shook his head and tapped the breast pocket of his
smock.

‘How many times have I contemplated that,’ he said. ‘And
never did I like to swallow paper.*

‘I have thought we should carry a litde mustard on them all/
Robert Jordan said. ‘In my left breast pocket I carry our papers.
In my right the fascist papers. Thus one does not make a mistake
in an emergency/

It must have been bad enough when the leader of the first patrol
of cavalry had pointed toward the entry because they were all
talking very much. Too much, Robert Jordan thought.

‘But look, Roberto/ Agustm said. ‘They say the government
moves farther to the right each day. That in the Republic they
271

no longer say Comrade but Senor and Senora. Canst shift thy
pockets ? ’

4 When it moves far enough to the right I will carry them in my
hip pocket,’ Robert Jordan said, ‘and sew it in the centre,’

‘That they should stay in thy shirt,’ Agustin said. ‘Are we to
win this war and lose the revolution?’

‘Nay,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘But if we do not win this war there
will be no revolution nor any Republic nor any thou nor any me
nor anything but the most grand car a jo. f

‘So say I,’ Anselmo said. ‘That we should win the war.’

‘And afterwards shoot the anarchists and the Communists and
all this canalla except the good Republicans,’ Agustin said.

‘That we should win this war and shoot nobody,’ Anselmo
said. ‘That we should govern justly and that all should participate
in the benefits according as they have striven for them. And that
those who have fought against us should be educated to see their
error.*

‘We will have to shoot many,* Agustin said. ‘Many, many,
many.*

He thumped his closed right fist against the palm of his left
hand.

‘That we should shoot none. Not even the leaders. That they
should be reformed by work.’

‘I know the work I’d put them at,’ Agustin said, and he picked
up some snow and put it in his mouth.

‘What, bad one?’ Robert Jordan asked.

‘Two trades of the utmost brilliance.’

‘They are?’

Agustin put some more snow in his mouth and looked across
the clearing where the cavalry had ridden. Then he spat the
melted snow out *Vaya. What a breakfast,’ he said. ‘Where is
the filthy gipsy?’

‘What trades?* Robert Jordan asked him. ‘Speak, bad mouth.’

‘Jumping from planes without parachutes,’ Agustin said, and
his eyes shone. ‘That for those that we care for. And being nailed
to the tops of fence posts to be pushed over backwards for the
others.’

‘That way of speaking is ignoble, 9 Anselmo said. ‘Thus we will
never have a Republic.*

T would like to swim ten leagues in a strong soup made from
272

the cojones of all of them," Agustin said. ‘And when I saw’ those
four there and thought that we might kill them I was like a mare
in the corral waiting for the stallion.*

‘You know why we did not kill them, though?* Robert Jordan
said quiedy.

‘Yes,’ Agustin said. ‘Yes. But the necessity was on me as it is on
a mare in heat. You cannot know what if is if you have not felt it.*
‘You sweated enough,* Robert Jordan said. ‘I thought it was
fear.’

‘Fear, yes,’ Agustin said. ‘Fear and the other. And in this life
there is no stronger thing than the other.*

Yes, Robert Jordan thought. We do it coldly but they do not,
nor ever have. It is their extra sacrament. Their old one that they
had before the new religion came from the far end of the Medi-
terranean, the one they have never abandoned but only suppressed
and hidden to bring it out again in w r ars and inquisitions. They
are the people of the Auto de Fe; the act of faith. Killing is some-
thing one must do, but ours are different from theirs. And you,
he thought, you have never been corrupted by it? You never had
it in the Sierra? Nor at Usera? Not through all the time in Estre-
madura? Nor at any time. Que va, he told himself. At every train.

Stop making dubious literature about the Berbers and the old
Iberians and admit that you have liked to kill as all who are
soldiers by choice have enjoyed it at some time whether they lie
about it or not. Anselmo does not like to because he is a hunter,
not a soldier. Don’t idealize him, either. Hunters kill animals and
soldiers kill men. Don’t lie to yourself, he thought. Nor make up
literature about it. You have been tainted with it for a long time
now. And do not think against Anselmo either. He is a Christian.
Something very rare in Catholic countries.

But with Agustin I had thought it was fear, he thought. That
natural fear before action. So it was the other, too. Of course, he
may be bragging now. There was plenty of fear. I felt the fear
under my hand. Well, it was time to stop talking.

‘See if the gipsy brought food,’ he said to Anselmo. ‘Do not let
him come up. He is a fool. Bring it yourself. And however much
he brought, send back for more. I am hungry.*

273

CHAPTER 24

Now the morning was late May, the sky was high and clear and
the wind blew warm on Robert Jordan’s shoulders. The snow
was going fast and they were eating breakfast. There were two
big sandwiches of meat and the goaty cheese apiece, and Robert
Jordan had cut thick slices of onion with his clasp knife and put
them on each side of the meat and cheese between the chunks of
bread.

‘You will have a breath that will carry through the forest to the
fascists,’ Agustin said, his own mouth full.

‘Give me the wineskin and I will rinse the mouth,* Robert
Jordan said, his mouth full of meat, cheese, onion, and chewed
bread.

He had never been hungrier and he filled his mouth with wine,
faintly tarry-tasting from the leather bag, and swallowed. Then
he took another big mouthful of wine, lifting the bag up to let
the jet of wine spurt into the back of his mouth, the wineskin
touching the needles of the blind of pine branches that covered
the automatic rifle as he lifted his hand, his head leaning against
the pine branches as he bent it back to let the wine run down.

‘Dost thou want this other sandwich?* Agustin asked him,
handing it toward him across the gun.

‘No. Thank you. Eat it.’

‘I cannot. I am not accustomed to eat in the morning.*

‘You do not want it, truly?*

‘Nay. Take it.’

Robert Jordan took it and laid it on his lap while he got the onion
out of his side jacket pocket where the grenades were and opened
his knife to slice it. He cut off a thin sliver of the surface that had
dirtied in his pocket, then cut a thick slice. An outer segment fell
and he picked it up and bent the circle together and put it into the
sandwich.

‘Eatest thou always onions for breakfast?* Agustin asked.

‘When there are any.*

‘Do all in thy country do this ?*

274

‘Nay,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘It is looked on badly there.’

‘I am glad/ Agustin said. ‘I had always considered America a
civilized country,’

4 What hast thou against the onion ?’

‘The odour. Nothing more. Otherwise it is like the rosed
Robert Jordan grinned at him with his mouth full.

‘Like the rose,’ he said. ‘Mighty like the rose. A rose is a rose is
an onion/

‘Thy onions are affecting thy brain/ Agustin said. ‘Take care/
‘An onion is an onion is an onion/ Robert Jordan said
cheerily and, he thought, a stone is a stein is a rock is a boulder is
a pebble.

‘Rinse thy mouth with wine/ Agustin said. ‘Thou art very
rare, Ingles. There is great difference between thee and the last
dynamiter who worked with us/

‘There is one great difference/

‘Tell it to me/

‘I am alive and he is dead/ Robert Jordan said. Then : what’s
the matter with you? he thought. Is that the way to talk? Does
food make you that slap happy? What are you, drunk on onions?
Is that all it means to you, now? It never meant much, he told
himself truly. You tried to make it mean something, but it never
did. There is no need to lie in the time that is left.

‘No/ he said, seriously now, ‘That one was a man wiio had
suffered greatly/

‘And thou? Has thou not suffered?’

‘No/ said Robert Jordan. ‘I am of those who suffer little/

‘Me also,’ Agustin told him. ‘There are those who suffer and
those who do not. I suffer very litde.’

‘Less bad/ Robert Jordan tipped up the wineskin again. ‘And
with this, less/

‘I suffer for others/

‘As all good men should/

‘But for myself very little/

‘Hast thou a wife?’

‘No/

‘Me neither/

‘But now you have the Maria/

‘Yes/

‘There is a rare thing/ Agustin said. ‘Since she came to us at
275

the train the Pilar has kept her away from all as fiercely as though
she were in a convent of Carmelites. You cannot imagine with
what fierceness she guarded her. You come, and she gives her to
thee as a present. How does that seem to thee?’

‘It was not thus.’

‘How was it, then?*

‘She has put her in my care.’

‘And thy care is to joder with her all night?”

‘With luck.’

‘What a manner to care for one.’

‘You do not understand that one can take good care of one
thus?*

‘Yes, but such care could have been furnished by any one of
us.’ '

‘Let us not talk of it any more,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘I care for
her seriously.’

‘Seriously?’

‘As there can be nothing more serious in this world.’

‘And afterwards? After this of the bridge? ’

‘She goes with me.’

‘Then,’ Agustfn said. ‘That no one speaks of it further and that
the two of you go with all luck.’

He lifted the leather winebag and took a long pull, then
handed it to Robert Jordan.

‘One thing more, Ingles,' he said.

‘Of course.’

‘I have cared much for her, too.’

Robert Jordan put his hand on his shoulder.

‘Much,’ Agustfn said. ‘Much. More than one is able to imagine.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘She has made an impression on me that does not dissipate.*

‘I can imagine.*

‘Look. I say this to thee in all seriousness.’

‘Say it.’

‘I have never touched her nor had anything to do with her but
I care for her gready. Ingles , do not treat her light. Because she
sleeps with thee she is no whore.’

‘I will care for her.’

‘I believe thee. But more. You do not understand how such a
girl would be if there had been no revolution. You have much
276

responsibility. This one, truly, has suffered much. She is not as
we are/

‘I will marry her/

‘Nav. Not that. There is no need for that under the resolution.
But’ - he nodded his head - ‘it would be better/

‘I will marry her,’ Robert Jordan said and could feel his throat
swelling as he said it. ‘I care for her great! v/

‘Later/ Agustin said. ‘\\ hen it is convenient. The important
thing is to have the intention/

‘I have it/

‘Listen/ Agustin said. ‘I am speaking too much of a matter in
which I have no right to intervene, but hast thou known many
girls of this country?’

‘A few/

‘Whores?’

‘Some who were not/ •

‘How many?’

‘Several/

‘And did you sleep with them?’

‘No.’

‘You see?’

‘Yes/

‘What I mean is that this Maria does not do this lightly/

‘Nor 1/

‘If I thought you did I would have shot you last night as you
lay with her. For this we kill much here/

‘Listen, old one/ Robert Jordan said. ‘It is because of the lack
of time that there has been informality. What we do not have is
time. To-morrow we must fight. To me that is nothing. But for
the Maria and me it means that we must live all of our life in this
time/

‘And a day and a night is little time/ Agustin said.

‘Yes. But there has been yesterday and the night before and
last night.’

‘Lopk,’ Agustin said. ‘If I can aid thee/ ■

‘No. We are all right/

‘If I could do anything for thee or for the cropped head — ’
‘No/ ‘

‘Truly, there is little one man can do for another/

‘No. There is much/

‘What?’

‘No matter what passes to-day and to-morrow in respect to
combat, give me thy confidence and obey even though the orders
may appear wrong/

‘You have my confidence. Since this of the cavalry and the
sending away of the horse/

‘That was nothing. You see that we are working for one thing.
To win the war. Unless we win, all other things are futile. To-
morrow we have a thing of great importance. Of true importance.
Also we will have combat. In combat there must be discipline.
For many things are not as they appear. Discipline must come
from trust and confidence/

Agustm spat on the ground.

‘The Maria and all such things are apart,’ he said. ‘That you
and the Maria should make use of what time there is as two
human beings. If I can aid thee I am at thy orders. But for the
thing of to-morrow I will obey thee blindly. If it is necessary that
one should die for the thing of to-morrow one goes gladly and
with the heart light/

‘Thus do I feel/ Robert Jordan said. ‘But to hear it from thee
brings pleasure/

‘And more/ Agustm said. ‘That one above/ he pointed toward
Primitivo, ‘is a dependable value. The Pilar is much, much more
than thou canst imagine. The old man Anselmo, also. Andres
also. Eladio also. Very quiet, but a dependable element. And
Fernando. I do not know how thou hast appreciated him. It is
true he is heavier than mercury. He is fuller of boredom than a
steer drawing a cart on the highroad. But to fight and to do as he
is told. Es muy hombrel Thou wilt see/

‘We are lucky/

‘No. We have two weak elements. The gipsy and Pablo. But
the band of Sordo are as much better than we are as we are better
than goat manure/

‘All is well then.’

‘Yes/ Agustin said. ?But I wish it was for to-day/

‘Me, too. To finish with it. But it is not/

‘Do you think it will be bad ? ’

‘It can be/

‘But thou art very cheerful now, Ingles'

‘Yes/

278

‘Me also. In spite of this of the Maria and all/

‘Do you know why? *

‘No/

‘Me neither. Perhaps it is the day. The day is good/

‘Who knows? Perhaps it is that we will have action/

‘I think it is that/ Robert Jordan said. ‘But not to-day. Of all
things; of all importance we must avoid it to-day/

As he spoke he heard something. It was a noise far oil that came
above the sound of the warm wind in the trees. He could not be
sure and he held his mouth open and listened, glancing up at
Primitive as he did so. He thought he heard it but then it was
gone. The wind was blowing in the pines and now Robert Jordan
strained all of himself to listen. Then he heard it faintly coming
down the wind.

‘It is nothing tragic with me/ he heard Agustin say. ‘That I
should never have the Maria is nothing. I will go with the w T hores
as always/

‘Shut up/ he said, not listening, and lying beside him, his head
having been turned away. Agustin looked over at him suddenly.

‘ Que pasa ?* he asked.

Robert Jordan put his hand over his own mouth and went on
listening. There it came again. It came faint, muted, dry, and far
away. But there was no mistaking it now. It was the precise,
crackling, curling roll of automatic rifle fire. It sounded as though
pack after pack of miniature firecrackers were going off at a dis-
tance that was almost out of hearing.

Robert Jordan looked up at Primitive who had his head up
now, his face looking toward them, his hand cupped to his ear.
As he looked Primitive pointed up the mountain toward the
highest country.

‘They are fighting at El Sordo’s/ Robert Jordan said.

‘Then let us go to aid them/ Agustin said. ‘Collect the people.
Vamonos /

‘No/ Robert Jordan said. ‘We stay here/

CHAPTER 25

Robert Jordan looked up at where Primitive stood now in
his look-out post, holding his rifle and pointing. He nodded his
head but the man kept pointing, putting his hand to his ear, and
then pointing insistently and as though he could not possibly have
been understood.

‘Do you stay with this gun and unless it is sure, sure, sure that
they are coming in do not fire. And then not until they reach that
shrub,’ Robert Jordan pointed. ‘Do you understand?*

‘Yes. But-*

‘No but. I will explain to thee later. I go to Primitive.*

Anselmo was by him and he said to the old man :

‘Viejo, stay there with Agustin with the gun.* He spoke slowly
and unhurriedly. ‘He must not fire unless cavalry is actually enter-
ing. If they merely present themselves he must let them alone as
we did before. If he must fire, hold the legs of the tripod firm for
him and hand him the pans when they empty.’

‘Good,’ the old man said. ‘And La Granja?’

‘Later.’

Robert Jordan climbed up, over and around the grey boulders
that were wet now under his hands as he pulled himself up. The
sun was melting the snow on them fast. The tops of the boulders
were drying and as he climbed he looked across the country and
saw the pine woods and the long open glade and the dip of the
country before the high mountains beyond. Then he stood beside
Primitivo in a hollow behind two boulders and the short, brown-
faced man said to him, ‘They are attacking Sordo. What is it that
we do?*

‘Nothing,* Robert Jordan said.

He heard the firing clearly here and as he looked across the
country, he saw, far off, across the distant valley where the coun-
try rose steeply again, a troop of cavalry ride out of the timber
and cross the snowy slope, riding uphill in the direction of the
firing. He saw the oblong double line of men and horses dark
against the snow as they forced at an angle up the hill. He
280

watched the double line top the ridge and go into the farther
timber.

‘We have to aid them/ Primitive said. His voice was dry and
flat.

‘It is impossible/ Robert Jordan told him. ‘I have expected this
all morning/

‘How?’

‘They went to steal horses last night. The snow stopped and
they tracked them up there/

‘But we have to aid them/ Primitive said, ‘We cannot leave
them alone to this. Those are our comrades/

Robert Jordan put his hand on the other man’s shoulder.

‘We can do nothing/ he said. ‘If we could I would do it/

‘There is a way to reach there from above. We can take that
way with the horses and the two guns. This one below and thine.
We can aid them thus/

‘Listen — ’ Robert Jordan said.

4 That is what I listen to/ Primitivo said.

The firing was rolling in overlapping waves. Then they heard
the noise of hand grenades heavy and sodden in the dry rolling of
the automatic rifle fire.

‘They are lost/ Robert Jordan said. ‘They were lost when the
snow stopped. If we go there we are lost, too. It is impossible to
divide what force we have/

There was a grey stubble of beard stippled over Primitive’s
jaws, his lip, and his neck. The rest of his face was flat brown
with a broken, flattened nose, and deep-set grey eyes, and watch-
ing him Robert Jordan saw the stubble twitching at the corners
of his mouth and over the cords of his throat.

‘Listen to it/ he said. ‘It is a massacre.’

‘If they have surrounded the hollow it is that/ Robert Jordan
said. ‘Some may have gotten out.’

‘Coming on them now we could take them from behind/
Primitivo said. ‘Let four of us go with the horses.*

‘And then what? What happens after you take them from
behind?’

‘We join with Sordo/

‘To die there ? Look at the sun. The day is long/

The sky was high and cloudless and the sun was hot on their
backs. There were big bare patches now on the southern slope of
281

the open glade below them and the snow was all dropped from
the pine trees. The boulders below them that had been wet as the
snow melted were steaming faintly now in the hot sun.

‘You have to stand it,' Robert Jordan said. ‘ Hay que aguantarse .
There are things like this in a war.’

‘But there is nothing we can do? Truly?’ Primitive looked at
him and Robert Jordan knew he trusted him. ‘Thou couldst not
send me and another with the small machine gun? *

‘It would be useless/ Robert Jordan said.

He thought he saw something that he was looking for but it
was a hawk that slid down into the wind and then rose above the
line of the farthest pine woods. ‘It would be useless if we all
went/ he said.

Just then the firing doubled in intensity and in it was the heavy
bumping of the hand grenades.

‘Oh, obscenity them/ Primitivo said with an absolute devout-
ness of blasphemy, tears in his eyes, and his cheeks twitching.
‘Oh, God and the Virgin, obscenity them in the milk of their
filth/

‘Calm thyself/ Robert Jordan said. ‘You will be fighting them
soon enough. Here comes the woman.’

Pilar was climbing up to them, making heavy going of it in the
boulders.

Agustrn kept saying, ‘Obscenity them. Oh, God and the Vir-
gin, befoul them’ each time the firing rolled down the wind, and
Robert Jordan climbed down to help Pilar-up.

'Que tal , woman/ he said, taking hold of both her wrists and
hoisting as she climbed heavily over the last boulder.

‘Thy binoculars/ she said and lifted their strap over her head.
‘So it has come to Sordo?*

‘Yes.’

‘ Pobre / she said in commiseration. ‘Poor Sordo/

She was breathing heavily from the climb and she took hold of
Robert Jordan’s hand and gripped it tight in hers as she looked
out over the country.

‘How does the combat seem?*

‘Bad. Very bad.’

‘He’s jodidoV

‘I believe so.’

'PobreJ she said. ‘Doubtless because of the horses?’

282

‘Probably.®

‘ Pobre Pilar said. Then, ‘Rafael recounted me all of an entire
novel of dung about cavalry. What came?’

‘ A patrol and part of a squadron. 5

‘Up to what point?*

Robert Jordan pointed out where the patrol had stopped and
showed her where the gun was hidden. From where thev stood
they could just see one of Agustm’s boots protruding from the
rear of the blind.

‘The gipsy said they rode to where the gun muzzle pressed
against the chest of the horse of the leader, 5 Pilar said. ‘What a
race ! Thy glasses were in the cave.’

‘Have you packed ? ’

‘All that can be taken. Is there news of Pablo?’

‘He was forty minutes ahead of the cavalry. They took his
trail.*

Pilar grinned at him. She still held his hand. Now she dropped
it. ‘They’ll never see him, 5 she said. “Now for Sordo. Can we do
anything?’

‘Nothing.’

‘ Pobre ,’ she said. ‘I was very fond of Sordo. Thou art sure, sure
that he is jodido ? ’

‘Yes. I have seen much cavalry.’

‘More than were here?’

‘Another full troop on their way up there.’

‘Listen to it, 5 Pilar said. l Pobre i pobre Sordo.*

They listened to the firing.

‘Primitivo wanted to go up there,’ Robert Jordan said,

‘Art thou crazy?’ Pilar said to the flat-faced man. ‘What kind
of locos are we producing around here?’

‘I wish to aid them. 5

t Quc va * Pilar said. ‘Another romantic. Dost thou not believe
thou wilt die quick enough here without useless voyages?’

Robert Jordan looked at her, at the heavy brown face with the
high Indian cheekbones, the wide-set dark eyes, and the laughing
mouth with the heavy, bitter upper lip.

‘Thou must act like a man,* she said to Primitivo. ‘A grown
man. You with your grey hairs and all.’

‘Don’t joke at me,’ Primitivo said sullenly. ‘If a man has a little
heart and a little imagination

283

‘He should learn to control them/ Pilar said. ‘Thou wilt die
soon enough with us. There is no need to seek that with strangers.
As for thy imagination. The gipsy has enough for all. What a
novel he told me/

‘If thou hadst seen it thou wouldst not call it a novel/ Primitivo
said, ‘There was a moment of great gravity.’

‘Que va / Pilar said. ‘Some cavalry rode here and they rode
away. And you all make yourselves a heroism. It is to this we
have come with so much inaction/

‘And this of Sordo is not grave?’ Primitivo said contemptuously
now. He suffered visibly each time the firing came down the wind
and he wanted either to go to the combat or have Pilar go and
leave him alone.

'^Total que? y Pilar said. ‘It has come so it has come. Don’t lose
thy cojones for the misfortune of another/

‘Go defile thyself/ Primitivo said. ‘There are women of a
stupidity and brutality that is insupportable.’

‘In order to support and aid those men poorly equipped for
procreation/ Pilar said. ‘If there is nothing to see I am going.’

Just then Robert Jordan heard the plane high overhead. He
looked up and in the high sky it looked to be the same observa-
tion plane that he had seen earlier in the morning. Now it was
returning from the direction of the lines and it was moving
in the direction of the high country where El Sordo was being
attacked.

‘There is the bad luck bird/ Pilar said. ‘Will it see what goes on
there?’

‘Surely/ Robert Jordan said. ‘If they are not blind.’

They watched the plane moving high and silvery and steady
in the sunlight. It was coming from the left and they could see the
rou'nd disks of Mght the two propellers made.

‘Keep down/ Robert Jordan said.

Then the plane was overhead, its shadows passing over the
open glade, the throbbing reaching its maximum of portent. Then
it was past and headed toward the top of the valley. They watched
it go steadily on its course until it was just out of sight and then
they saw it coming back in a wide dipping circle, to circle twice
over the high country, and then disappear in the direction of
Segovia.

Robert Jordan looked at Pilar. There was perspiration on her
284

forehead and she shook her head. She had been holding her lower
lip between her teeth.

‘For each one there is something/ she said. Tor me it is those.'

‘Thou hast not caught my fear?’ Primitive said sarcastically.

‘Nay/ she put her hand on his shoulder. Thou hast no fear to
catch. I know that. I am sorry I joked too roughiv with thee. We
are all in the same cauldron/ Then she spoke to Robert Jordan. 1
will send up food and wine. Dost need anything more?’

‘Not in this moment. Where are the others?’

‘Thy reserve is intact below with the horses/ she grinned.
‘Everything is out of sight. Everything to go is ready. Maria is
with thy material/

‘If by any chance we should have aviation keep her in the
cave/

.‘Yes, my Lord Ingles / Pilar said. ‘Thy gipsy (I give him to
thee) I have sent to gather mushroom to cook with the hares.
There are many mushrooms now and it seemed to me we might
as well eat the hares although they would be better to-morrow or
the day after/

‘I think it is best to eat them/ Robert Jordan said, and Pilar put
her big hand on his shoulder where the strap of the sub-machine
gun crossed his chest, then reached up, and mussed his hair with
her fingers. ‘What an Ingles’ Pilar said, ‘I will send the Maria
with the puchero when they are cooked/

The firing from far away and above had almost died out and
now there was only an occasional shot.

‘You think it is over?’ Pilar asked.

‘No/ Robert Jordan said. ‘From the sound that we have heard
they have attacked and been beaten off. Now I would say the
attackers have them surrounded. They have taken cover and they
wait for the planes.’

Pilar spoke to Primitivo, ‘Thou. Dost understand there was no
intent to insult thee?’

‘Ya lo se’ said Primitivo. ‘I have put up with worse than that
from thee. Thou hast a vile tongue. But watch thy mouth,
woman. Sordo was a good comrade of mine/

‘And not of mine?’ Pilar asked him. ‘Listen, flat face. In war
one cannot say what one feels. We have enough of our own with-
out taking Sordo’s/ .

Primitive was still sullen.

285

right to kill anyone? No. But I have to. How many of those you
have killed have been real fascists? Very few. But they are all the
enemy to whose force we are opposing force. But you like the
people of Navarra better than those of any other part of Spain.
Yes. And you kill them. Yes. If you don’t believe it go down there
to the camp. Don’t you know it is wrong to kill? Yes. But you do
it? Yes. And you still believe absolutely that your cause is right?
Yes,

It is right, he told himself, not reassuringly, but proudly. I be-
lieve in the people and their right to govern themselves as they
wish. But you mustn’t believe in killing, he told himself. You
must do it as a necessity but you must not believe in it. If you
believe in it the whole thing is wrong.

But how many do you suppose you have killed? I don’t know
because I won’t keep track. But do you know? Yes. How many?
You can’t be sure how many. Blowing the trains you kill many.
Very many. But you can’t be sure. But of those you are sure of?
More than twenty. And of those how many were real fascists?
Two that I am sure of. Because I had to shoot them when we took
them prisoners at Usera. And you did not mind that? No. Nor
did you like it? No. I decided never to do it again. I have avoided
it. I have avoided killing those who are unarmed.

Listen, he told himself. You’d better cut this out. This is very
bad for you and for your work. Then himself said back to him,
You listen, see? Because you are doing something very serious
and I have to see you understand it all the time. I have to keep
you straight in your head. Because if you are not absolutely
straight in your head you have no right to do the things you do
for all of them are crimes and no man has a right to take another
man’s life unless it is to prevent something worse happening to
other people. So get it straight and do not lie to yourself.

But I won’t keep a count of people I have killed as though it
were a trophy record or a disgusting business like notches in a
gun, he told himself. I have a right not to keep count and I have
a right to forget them.

No, himself said. You have no right to* forget anything. You
have no right to shut your eyes to any of it nor any right to forget
any of it nor to soften it nor to change it.

Shut up, he told himself. You’re getting awfully pompous.

Nor ever to deceive yourself about it, himself went on.

288

All right, he told himself. Thanks for all the good advice and is
it all right for me to love Maria?

Yes, himself said.

Even if there isn’t supposed to be any such thing as love in a
purely materialistic conception of society?

Since when did you ever have any such conception? himself
asked. Never. And you never could have. You’re not a real Marx-
ist and you know it. You believe in Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity. You believe in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Hap-
piness. Don’t ever kid yourself with too much dialectics. They are
for some but not for you. You have to know them in order not to
be a sucker. You have put many things in abeyance to win a war.
If this war is lost all of those things are lost.

But afterwards you can discard what you do not believe in.
There is plenty you do not believe in and plenty that you do be-
lieve in.

And another thing. Don’t ever kid yourself about loving some-
one. It is just that most people are not lucky enough ever to have
it. You never had it before and now you have it. What you have
with Maria, whether it lasts just through to-day and a part of to-
morrow, or whether it lasts for a long life is the most important
thing that can happen to a human being. There will always be
people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I
tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even
if you die to-morrow.

Cut out the dying stuff, he said to himself. That’s not the way
we talk. That’s the way our friends the anarchists talk. Whenever
things get really bad they want to set fire to something and to die.
It’s a very odd kind of mind they have. Very odd. Well, we’re
getting through to-day, old timer, he told himself. It’s nearly three
o’clock now and there is going to be some food sooner or later.
They are still shooting up at Sordo’s, which means that they have
him surrounded and are waiting to bring up more people, prob-
ably. Though they have to make it before dark.

I wonder what it is like up at Scfrdo’s. That’s what we all have
to expect, given enough time. I imagine it is not too jovial up at
Sordo’s. We certainly got Sordo into a fine jam with that horse
business. How does it go in Spanish? Un callejon sin salida. A
passage-way with no exit. I suppose I could go through with it all
right. You only have to do it once and it is soon over with. But
289

wouldn’t it be luxury to fight in a war some time where, when
you were surrounded, you could surrender? Estamos cop ados.
We are surrounded. That was the great panic cry of this war.
Then the next thing was that you were shot; with nothing bad
before it you were lucky. Sordo wouldn’t be lucky that way.
Neither would they when the time ever came.

It was three o’clock. Then he heard the far-off, distant throb-
bing and, looking up, he saw the planes.

CHAPTER 27

El Sordo was making his fight on a hilltop. He did not like this
hill and when he saw it he thought it had the shape of a chancre.
But he had had no choice except this hill and he had picked it as
far away as he could see it and galloped for it, the automatic rifle
heavy on his back, the horse labouring, barrel heaving between
his thighs, the sack of grenades swinging against one side, the
sack of automatic rifle pans banging against the other, and Joa-
quin and Ignacio halting and firing, halting and firing to give
him time to get the gun in place.

There had still been snow then, the snow that had ruined them,
and when his horse was hit so that he wheezed in a slow, jerking,
climbing stagger up the last part of the crest, splattering the snow
with a bright, pulsing jet, Sordo had hauled him along by the
bridle, the reins over his shoulder as he climbed. He climbed as
hard as he could with the bullets spatting on the rocks, with the
two sacks heavy on his shoulders, and then, holding the horse by
the mane, had shot him quickly, expertly, and tenderly just where
he had needed him, so that the horse pitched, head forward, down
to plug a gap between two rocks. He had gotten the gun to firing
over the horse’s back and he fired two pans, the gun clattering,
the empty shells pitching into the snow, the smell of burnt hair
from the burnt hide where the hot muzzle rested, him firing at
what came up to the hill, forcing them to scatter for cover, while
all the time there was a chill in his back from not knowing what
was behind him. Once the last of the five men had reached the
hilltop the chill went out of his back and he had saved the pans
he had left until he would need them.

290

There were two more horses dead along the slope and three
more were dead here on the hilltop. He had only succeeded in
stealing three horses last night and one had bolted when they tried
to mount him bareback in the corral at the camp when the first
shooting had started.

Of the five men who had reached the hilltop three were
wounded. Sordo was wounded in the calf of his leg and in two
places in his left arm. He was very thirsty, his wounds had stif-
fened, and one of the wounds in his left arm was very painful.
He also had a bad headache and as he lay waiting for the planes
to come he thought of a joke in Spanish. It was, que tomar
la muerte como so fuera aspirina\ which means, ‘You will have
to take death as an aspirin’. But he did not make the joke aloud.
He grinned somewhere inside the pain in his head and inside the
nausea that came whenever he moved his arm and looked around
at what there was left of his band.

The five men were spread out like the points of a five-pointed
star. They had dug with their knees and hands and made mounds
in front of their heads and shoulders with the dirt and piles of
stones. Using this cover, they were linking the individual mounds
up with stones and dirt. Joaquin, who was eighteen years old,
had a steel helmet that he dug with and he passed dirt
in it.

He had gotten this helmet at the blowing up of the train. It had
a bullet hole through it and everyone had always joked at him for
keeping it. But he had hammered the jagged edges of the bullet
hole smooth and driven a wooden plug into it and then cut the
plug off and smoothed it even with the metal inside the helmet.

When the shooting started he had clapped this helmet on his
head so hard it banged his head as though he had been hit with
a casserole and, in the last lung-aching, leg-dead, mouth-dry,
bullet-spatting, bullet-cracking, bullet-singing run up the final
slope of the hill after his horse was killed, the helmet had seemed
to weigh a great amount and to ring his bursting forehead with
an iron band. But he had kept it. Now he dug with it in a steady,
almost machine-like desperation. He had not yet been hit.

‘It serves for something finally,’ Sordo said to him in his deep,
throaty voice.

‘ Resistir y fortificar es veneer ,’ Joaquin said, his mouth stiff
with the dryness of fear which surpassed the normal thirst of
* 291

battle. It was one of the slogans of the Communist party and it
meant, ‘Hold out and fortify, and you will win*.

Sordo looked away and down the slope at where a cavalryman
was sniping from behind a boulder. He was very fond of this boy
and he was in no mood for slogans.

‘What did you say?’

One of the men turned from the building that he was doing.
This man was lying Hat on his face, reaching carefully up with
his hands to put a rock in place while keeping his chin flat against
the ground.

t Joaquin repeated the slogan in his dried-up boy’s voice with-
out checking his digging for a moment.

‘What was the last word? ’ the man with his chin on the ground
asked.

‘ Veneer the boy said. ‘Win.’

‘ Mierda ,’ the man with his chin on the ground said.

‘There is another that applies to here,’ Joaquin said, bringing
them out as though they were talismans, ‘Pasionaria says it is
better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.’

‘ Mierda again,’ the man said and another man said, over his
shoulder,* ‘We’re on our bellies, not our knees.’

‘Thou. Communist. Do you know your Pasionaria has a son
thy age in Russia since the start of the movement?’

‘It’s a lie,’ Joaquin said.

*Qu6 va y it’s a lie,’ the other said. ‘The dynamiter with the rare
name told me. He was of thy party, too. Why should he lie?’

‘It’s a lie,’ Joaquin said. ‘She would not do such a thing as keep
a son hidden in Russia out of the war.’

‘I wish I were in Russia,’ another of Sordo’s men said. ‘Will not
thy Pasionaria send me now from here to Russia, Communist?’

‘If thou believest so much tn thy Pasionaria, get her to get us
off this hill,’ one of the men who had a bandaged thigh said.

‘The fascists will do that,’ the man with his chin in the dirt said.

‘Do not speak thus,’ Joaquin said to him.

‘Wipe the pap of your mother’s breast off thy lips and give me
a hatful of that dirt,’ the man with his chin on the ground said.
‘No one of us will see the sun go down this night.’

El Sordo was thinking: It is shaped like a chancre. Or the
breast of a young girl with no nipple. Or the top cone of a volcano.
You have never seen a volcano, he thought. Nor will you ever
292

see one. And this hill is like a chancre. Let the volcanoes alone. It’s
late now for the volcanoes.

He looked very carefully around the withers of the dead horse
and there was a quick hammering of firing from behind a boulder
well down the slope and he heard the bullets from the sub-
machine gun thud into the horse. He crawled along behind the
horse and looked out of the angle between the horse’s hind-
quarters and the rock. There were three bodies on the slope just
below him where they had fallen when the fascists had rushed the
crest under cover of the automatic rifle and sub-machine gunfire
and he and the others had broken down the attack by throwing
and rolling down hand grenades. There were other bodies that
he could not see on the other sides of the hill crest. There was no
dead ground by which attackers could approach the summit and
Sordo knew that as long as his ammunition and grenades held out
and he had as many as four men they could not get him out of
there unless they brought up a trench mortar. He did not know
whether they had sent to La Gran] a for a trench mortar. Perhaps
they had not, because surely, soon, the planes would come. It had
been four hours since the observation plane had flown over them.

This hill is truly like a chancre, Sordo thought, and we are the
very pus of it. But we killed many when they made that stupid-
ness. How could they think that they would take us thus? They
have such modern armament that they lose ail their sense with
over-confidence. He had killed the young officer who had led the
assault with a grenade that had gone bouncing and rolling down
the slope as they came up it, running, bent half over. In the yellow
flash and grey roar of smoke he had seen the officer dive forward
to where he lay now like a heavy, broken bundle of old clothing
marking the farthest point that the assault had reached. Sordo
looked at this body and then, down*the hill at the others.

They are brave but stupid people, he thought. But they have
sense enough now not to attack us again until the planes come.
Unless, of course, they have a mortar coming. It would be easy
with a mortar. The mortar was the normal thing and he knew
that they would die as soon as a mortar came up, but when he
thought of the planes coming up he felt as naked on that hilltop
as though all of his clothing and even his skin had been removed.
There is no nakeder thing than I feel, he thought. A flayed rabbit
is as well covered as a bear in comparison. But why should they
293

bring planes? They could get us out of here with a trench mortar
easily. They are proud of their planes, though, and they will prob-
ably bring them. Just as they were so proud of their automatic
weapons that they made that stupidness. But undoubtedly they
must have sent for a mortar too.

One of the men fired. Then jerked the bolt and fired again,
quickly. ‘Save thy cartridges,’ Sordo said.

‘One of the sons of the great whore tried to reach that boulder,’
the man pointed.

‘Did you hit him?’ Sordo asked, turning his head with diffi-
culty.

‘Nay,’ the man said. ‘The fornicator ducked back.’

‘Who is a whore of whores is Pilar,’ the man with his chin in
the dirt said. ‘That whore knows we are dying here.’

‘She could do no good,’ Sordo said. The man had spoken on the
side of his good ear and he had heard him without turning his
head. ‘What could she do ? *

‘Take these sluts from the rear.’

‘ Que m ,’ Sordo said. ‘They are spread around a hillside. How
would she come on them? There are a hundred and fifty of them.
Maybe rAore now.’

‘But if we hold out until dark,’ Joaquin said.

‘And if Christmas comes on Easter,’ the man with his chin on
the ground said.

‘And if thy aunt had cojones she would be thy uncle,’ another
said to him. ‘Send for thy Pasionaria. She alone can help us.’

‘I do not believe that about the son,’ Joaquin said. ‘Or if he is
there he is training to be an aviator or something of that sort.*

‘He is hidden there for safety,’ the man told him.

‘He is studying dialectics. Thy Pasionaria has been there. So
have Lister and Modesto and others. The one with the rare name
told me.*

‘That they should go to study and return to aid us,’ Joaquin said.

‘That they should aid us now,’ another man said. ‘That all the
cruts of Russian sucking swindlers should aid us now.* He fired
and said, l Me cago en tab, I missed him again.’

‘Save thy cartridges and do not talk so much or thou wilt be
very thirsty,* Sordo said. ‘There is no water on this hill. 5
, ‘Take this,* the man said and rolling on his side he pulled a
wineskin that he wore slung from his shoulder over his head and
294

handed it to Sordo. ‘Wash thy mouth out, old one. Thou must
have much thirst with thy wounds. 5

“Let all take it,* Sordo said.

‘Then I will have some first/ the owner said and squirted a long
stream into his mouth before he handed the leather bottle around.

‘Sordo, when thinkest thou the planes will come? 5 the man
with his chin in the dirt asked.

‘Any time/ said Sordo. ‘They should have come before. 5

‘Do you think these spns of the great whore will attack again?’

‘Only if the planes do not come.’

He did not think there was any need to speak about the mortar.
They would know it soon enough when the mortar came.

‘God knows they’ve enough planes with what we saw yester-
day.*

‘Too many/ Sordo said.

His head hurt very much and his arm was stiffening so that the
pain of moving it was almost unbearable. He looked up at the
bright, high, blue early-summer sky as he raised the leather wine
bottle with his good arm. He was fifty-two years old and he was
sure this was the last time he would see that sky.

He was not at all afraid of dying but he was angry at being
trapped on this hill which was only utilizable as a place to die. If
we could have gotten clear, he thought. If we could have made
them come up the long valley or if we could have broken loose
across the road it would have been all right. But this chancre of a
hill. We must use it as well as we can and we have used it very
well so far.

If he had known how many men in history have had to use a
hill to die on it would not have cheered him any for, in the mo-
ment he was passing through, men are not impressed by what has
happened to other men in similar circumstances any more than a
widow of one day is helped by the knowledge that other loved
husbands have died. Whether one has fear of it or not, one’s death
is difficult to accept. Sordo bfed accepted it but there was no
sweetness in its acceptance even at fifty-two, with three wounds
and him surrounded on a hill.

He joked about it to himself but he looked at the sky and at the
far mountains and he swallowed the wine and he did not want it.
If one must die, he thought, and clearly one must, I can die. But
I hate it.

Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in
his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on
the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an
earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain
flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between
your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and
a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the
hills beyond.

Sordo passed the wine bottle back and nodded his head in
thanks. He leaned forward and patted the dead horse on the
shoulder where the muzzle of the automatic rifle had burned the
hide. He could still smell the burnt hair. He thought how he had
held the horse there, trembling, with the fire around them, whis-
pering and cracking, over and around them like a curtain, and
had carefully shot him just at the intersection of the crosslines
between the two eyes and the ears. Then as the horse pitched
down he had dropped down behind his warm, wet back to get the
gun going as they came up the hill.

* Eras mucho caballo ,’ he said, meaning, ‘Thou wert plenty of
horse.’

El Sordo lay now on his good side and looked up at the sky. He
was lying on a heap of empty cartridge hulls but his head was pro-
tected by the rock and his body lay in the lee of the horse. His
wounds had stiffened badly and he had much pain and he felt too
tired to move.

‘What passes with thee, old one?’ the man next to him asked.

‘Nothing, I am taking a little rest.’

‘Sleep,’ the other said. * They will wake us when they come.’

Just then someone shouted from down the slope.

‘Listen, bandits !’ the voice came from behind the rocks where
the closest automatic rifle was placed. ‘Surrender now before the
planes blow you to pieces.’

‘What is it he says?’ Sordo asked.

Joaquin told him. Sordo rolledfto one side and pulled himself
up so that he was crouched behind the gun again.

‘Maybe the planes aren’t coming,’ he said. ‘Don’t answer them
and do not fire. Maybe we can get them to attack again.’

‘If we should insult them a little?’ the man who had spoken to
Joaquin about La Pasionaria’s son in Russia asked.

‘No,’ Sordo said. ‘Give me thy big pistol. Who has a big pistol?’

296

‘Here.’

‘Give it to me.* Crouched on his knees he took the big 9 mm.
Star and fired one shot into the ground beside the dead horse,
waited, then fired again four times at irregular intervals. Then
he waited while he counted sixty and then fired a final shot
directly into the body of the dead horse. He grinned and handed
back the pistol.

‘Reload it/ he whispered, ‘and that everyone should keep his
mouth shut and no one shoot/

‘ jBandidosV the voice shouted from behind the rocks.

No one spoke on the hill.

‘ / Bandidosl Surrender now before we blow thee to little pieces.’

‘They’re biting/ Sordo whispered happily.

As he watched, a man showed his head over the top of the rocks.
There was no shot from the hilltop and the head went down
again. El Sordo waited, watching, but nothing more happened.
He turned his head and looked at the others who were all watch-
ing down their sectors of the slope. As he looked at them the
others shook their heads.

‘Let no one move/ he whispered.

‘Sons of the great whore/ the voice came now from behind the
rocks again.

‘Red swine. Mother rapers. Eaters of the milk of thy fathers/

Sordo grinned. He could just hear the bellowed insults by turn-
ing his good ear. This is better than the aspirin, he thought. How
many will we get? Can they be that foolish?

The voice had stopped again and for three minutes they heard
nothing and saw no movement. Then the sniper behind the
boulder a hundred yards down the slope exposed himself and
fired. The bullet hit a rock and ricocheted with a sharp whine.
Then Sordo saw a man, bent double, run from the shelter of the
rocks where the automatic rifle was across the open ground to the
big boulder behind which the sniper was hidden. He almost dove
behind the boulder. «

Sordo looked around. They signalled to him that there was no
movement on the other slopes. Ei Sordo grinned happily and
shook his head. Thi§ Is ten times better than the aspirin, he
thought, and he waited, as happy as only a hunter can be happy.

Relow on the slope the man who had run from the pile of stones
to the shelter of the boulder was speaking to the sniper.

297

"Do you believe it?*

"I don’t know/ the sniper said.

"It would be logical/ the man, who was the officer in com-
mand, said. ‘They are surrounded. They have nothing to expect
but to die.’

The sniper said nothing.

‘What do you think? ’ the officer asked.

‘Nothing/ the sniper said.

‘Have you seen any movement since the shots?*

‘None at all.’

The officer looked at his wrist watch. It was ten minutes to
three o’clock.

‘The planes should have come an hour ago/ he said. Just then
another officer flopped in behind the boulder. The sniper moved
over to make room for him.

‘Thou, Paco/ the first officer said. ‘How does it seem to thee?*

The second officer was breathing heavily from his sprint up
and across the hillside from the automatic rifle position.

‘For me it is a trick/ he said.

‘But if it is not? What a ridicule we make waiting here and
laying siege to dead men.’

‘We have done something worse than ridiculous already/ the
second officer said. ‘Look at that slope/

He looked up the slope to where the dead were scattered close
to the top. From where he looked the line of the hilltop showed
the scattered rocks, the belly, projecting legs, shod hooves jutting
out, of Sordo’s horse, and the fresh dirt thrown up by the digging.

‘What about the mortars?’ asked the second officer.

‘They should be here in an hour. If not before.’

‘Then wait for them. There has been enough stupidity already.’

* jBandidos!* the first officer shouted suddenly, getting to his
feet and putting his head well up above the boulder so that the
crest of the hill looked much closer as he stood upright. ‘Red
swine ! Cowards I’ h

The second officer looked at the sniper and shook his head. The
sniper looked away but his lips tightened.

The first officer stood there, his head all clear of the rock, and
with his hand on his pistol butt. He cursed and vilified .the hill-
top. Nothing happened. Then he stepped clear of the boulder and
stood there looking up the hill.

298

‘Fire, cowards, if you are alive,’ he shouted. ‘Fire on one who
has no fear of any Red that ever came out of the belly of the great
whore.’ *

This last was quite a long sentence to shout and the officer’s
face was red and congested as he finished.

The second officer, who was a thin sunburned man with quiet
eyes, a thin, long-lipped mouth, and a stubble of beard over his
hollow cheeks, shook his head again. It was this officer who was
shouting who had ordered the first assault. The young lieutenant
who was dead up the slope had been the best friend of this other
lieutenant who was named Paco Berrendo and who was listening
to the shouting of the captain, who was obviously in a state of
exaltation.

‘Those are the swine who shot my sister and my mother,’ the
captain said. He had a red face and a blond, British-looking mous-
tache and there was something wrong about his eyes. Tfiey were
a light blue and the lashes were light, too. As you looked at them
they seemed to focus slowly. Then ‘Reds !’ he shouted. ‘Cowards!’
and commenced cursirf 1 ^ again. #

He stood absolutely clear now and, sighting carefully, fired his
pistol at the only target that the hilltop presented : the dead horse
that had belonged to Sordo. The bullet threw up a puff of dirt
fifteen yards below the horse. The captain fired again. The bullet
hit a rock and sung off.

The captain stood there looking at the hilltop. The Lieutenant
Berrendo was looking at the body of the other lieutenant just
below the summit. The sniper was looking at the ground under
his eyes. Then he looked up at the captain.

‘There is no one alive up there,’ the captain said. ‘Thou,* he
said to the sniper, ‘go up there and see.*

The sniper looked down. He said nothing.

‘Don’t you hear me? ’ the captain shouted at him.

‘Yes, my captain,* the sniper said, not looking at him.

‘Then get up and go.’ The captain still had his pistol out. ‘Do
you hear me?’

‘Yes, my captain.’

‘Why don’t you go, then?’

‘I don’t want to, my captain.’

‘You don’t want to?’ The captain pushed the pistol against the
small of the man’s back. ‘You don’t want to?’

299

‘I am afraid, my captain,’ the soldier said with dignity.

Lieutenant Berrendo, watching the captain’s face and his odd
d^es, thought he was going to shoot the man then.

‘Captain Mora,’ he said.

‘Lieutenant Berrendo?’

‘It is possible the soldier is right.’

‘That he is right to say he is afraid? That he is right to say he
does not want to obey an order ?’

‘No. That he is right that it is a trick.*

‘They are all dead,’ the captain said. ‘Don’t you hear me say
they are all dead? *

‘You mean our comrades on the slope?’ Berrendo asked him, ‘I
agree with you.’

‘Paco,* the captain said, ‘don’t be a fool. Do you think you are
the only one who cared for Julian? I tell you the Reds are dead.
Look?*

He stood up, then put both hands on top of the boulder, and
pulled himself up, kneeing-up awkwardly, then getting on his
feet*

‘Shoot,’ he shouted, standing on the grey granite boulder and
waved both his arms. ‘Shoot me ! Kill me ! *

On the hilltop El Sordo lay behind the dead horse and
grinned.

What a people, he thought. He laughed, trying to hold it in
because the shaking hurt his arm.

‘Reds,’ came the shout from below. ‘Red canaille. Shoot me !
Kill me!’

Sordo, his chest shaking, barely peeped past the horse’s crupper
and saw the captain on top of the boulder waving his arms. An-
other officer stood by the boulder. The sniper was standing at the
other side. Sordo kept his eye where it was and shook his head
happily.

‘Shoot me,’ he said softly to himself. ‘Kill me!’ Then his
shoulders shook again. The laughing hurt his arm and each time
he laughed his head felt as though it would burst. But the
laughter shook him again like a spasm.

Captain Mora got down from the boulder.

‘Now do you believe me, Paco?’ he questioned Lieutenant
Berrendo.

‘No,’ said Lieutenant Berrendo.

3 °°

‘/ CojonesV the captain said. ‘Here there is nothing but idiots
and cowards.’

The sniper had gotten carefully behind the boulder again and
Lieutenant Berrendo was squatting beside him.

The captain, standing in the open beside the boulder, com-
menced to shout filth at the hilltop. There is no language so filthy
as Spanish. There are words for all the vile words in English and
there are other words and expressions that are used only in coun-
tries where blasphemy keeps pace with the austerity of religion.
Lieutenant Berrendo was a very devout Catholic, So was the
sniper. They were Carlists from Navarra and while both of them
cursed and blasphemed when they were angry they regarded it
as a sin which they regularly confessed.

As they crouched now behind the boulder watching the captain
and listening to what he was shouting, they both disassociated
themselves from him and what he was saving. They did not want
to have that sort of talk on their consciences on a day in which
they might die. Talking thus will not bring luck, the sniper
thought. Speaking thus of the Virgen is bad luck. This one speaks
worse than the Reds.

Julian is dead, Lieutenant Berrendo was thinking. Dead there
on the slope on such a day as this is. And this foul mouth stands
there bringing more ill fortune with his blasphemies.

Now the captain stopped shouting and turned to Lieutenant
berrendo. His eyes looked stranger than ever.

6 Paco,’ he said, happily, ‘you and I will go up there.*

‘Not me.*

‘What?’ The captain had his pistol out again.

I hate these pistol-brandishers, Berrendo was thinking. They
cannot give an order without jerking a gun out. They probably
pull out their pistols when they go to the toilet and order the move
they will make.

‘I will go if you order me to. But under protest,* Lieutenant
Berrendo told the captain.

‘Then I will go alone,’ the captain said. ‘The smell of cowardice
is too strong here.’

Holding his pistol in his right hand, he strode steadily up the
slope, Berrendo and the sniper watched him. He was making no at-
tempt to take any cover and he was looking straight ahead of him
at the rocks, the dead horse, and the fresh-dug dirt of the hilltop.

301

El Sordo lay behind the horse at the corner of the rock, watch-
ing the captain come striding up the hill.

Only one, he thought. We get only one. But from his manner
of speaking he is caza mayor. Look at him walking. Look what an
animal. Look at him stride forward. This one is for me. This one
I take with me on the trip. This one coming now makes the same
voyage I do. Come on, Comrade Voyager. Come striding. Come
right along. Come a long to meet it. Come on. Keep on walking.
Don’t slow up. Come right along. Come as thou art coming.
Don’t stop and look at those. That’s right. Don’t even look down.
Keep on coming with your eyes forward. Look, he has a mous-
tache. What do you think of that? He runs to a moustache, the
Comrade Voyager. He is a captain. Look at his sleeves. I said he
was caza mayor. He has the face of an IngUs. Look. With a red
face and blond hair and blue eyes. With no cap on and his mous-
tache is yellow. With blue eyes. With pale blue eyes. With pale
blue eyes with something wrong with them. With pale blue eyes
that don’t focus. Close enough. Too close. Yes, Comrade Voyager.
Take it, Comrade Voyager.

He squeezed the trigger of the automatic rifle gently and it
pounded back three rimes against his shoulder with the slippery
jolt the recoil of a tripoded automatic weapon gives.

The captain lay on his face on the hillside. His left arm was
under him. His right arm that had held the pistol was stretched
forward of his head. From all down the slope they were firing on
the hill crest again.

Crouched behind the boulder, thinking that now he would
have to sprint across that open space under fire, Lieutenant
Berrendo heard the deep hoarse voice of Sordo from the
hilltop.

‘ j Bandidos!* the voice came. */ Bandidos ! Shoot me! Kill
me !’

On the top of the hill El Sordo lay behind the automatic rifle
laughing so that his chest ached, so that he thought the top of his
head would burst.

* Bandidos he shouted again happily. ‘Kill me, bandidos V
Then he shook his head happily. We have lots of company for
the Voyage, he thought.

He was going to try fof the other officer with the automatic rifle
when he would leave the shelter of the boulder. Sooner or later

302

he would have to leave It. Sordo knew that he could never com-
mand from there and he thought he had a very good chance to
get him.

Just then the others on the hill heard the first sound of the com-
ing of the planes.

El Sordo did not hear them. He was covering the down-slope
edge of the boulder with his automatic rifle and he w T as thinking:
when I see him he will be running already and I will miss him if
I am not careful. I could shoot behind him all across that stretch.

I should swing the gun with him and ahead of him. Or let him
start and then get on him and ahead of him. I w-ill try to pick him
up there at the edge of the rock and swing just ahead of him.
Then he felt a touch on his shoulder and he turned and saw the
grey, fear-drained face of Joaquin and he looked where the boy
was pointing and saw the three planes coming.

At this moment Lieutenant Berrendo broke from behind the
boulder and, with his head bent and his legs plunging, ran down
and across the slope to the shelter of the rocks where the auto-
matic rifle was placed.

Watching the planes, Sordo never saw him go.

‘Help me to pull this out,’ he said to Joaquin and the boy
dragged the automatic rifle clear from between the horse and the
rock.

The planes were coming on steadily. They were in echelon and
each second they grew larger and their noise was greater.

‘Lie on your backs to fire at them,’ Sordo said. ‘Fire ahead of
them as they come.’

He was watching them all the time. ‘/ Cabronesl jHijos de
putaV he said rapidly.

‘Ignacio ! ’ he said. ‘Put the gun on the shoulder of the boy.’
‘Thou!’ to Joaquin, ‘Sit there and do not move. Crouch over.
More. No. More.’

He lay back and sighted with the automatic rifle as the planes
came on steadily.

‘Thou, Ignacio, hold me the three legs of that tripod.’ They
were dangling down the boy’s back and the muzzle of the gun was
shaking from the jerking of his body that Joaquin could not con-
trol as he crouched with bent head hearing the droning roar of
their coming.

Lying flat on his belly and looking up into the sky watching

3°3

them come, Ignacio gathered the legs o£ the tripod into his two
hands, and steadied the gun.

‘Keep thy head down,’ he said to Joaquin. ‘Keep thy head for-
ward.’

‘Pasionaria says “Better to die on thy — ” ’ Joaquin was saying
to himself as the drone came nearer them. Then he shifted sud-
denly into ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; Blessed
art thou among women and Blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at
the hour of our death. Amen. Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ he
started, then he remembered quickly as the roar came now un-
bearably and started an act of contrition racing in it, ‘Oh, my God,
I am heartily sorry for having offended thee who art worthy of
all my love

Then there were the hammering explosions past his ears and
the gun barrel hot against his shoulder. It was hammering now
again and his ears were deafened by the muzzle blast. Ignacio was
pulling down hard on the tripod and the barrel was burning his
back. It was hammering now in the roar and he could not remem-
ber the act of contrition.

All he could remember was at the hour of our death. Amen. At
the hour of our death. Amen. At the hour. At the hour. Amen.
The others all were firing. Now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

Then, through the hammering of the gun, there* was the whistle
of the air splitting apart and then in the red black roar the earth
rolled under his knees and then waved up to hit him in the face
and then dirt and bits of rock were falling all over and Ignacio was
lying on him and the gun was lying on him. But he was not dead
because the whistle came again and the earth rolled under him
with the roar. Then it came again and the earth lurched under
his belly and one side of the hilltop rose into the air and then fell
slowly over them where they lay.

The planes came back three times and bombed the hilltop but
no one on the hilltop knew it. Then the planes machine-gunned
the hilltop and went away. As they dived on the hill for the last
time with their machine guns hammering, the first plane pulled
up and winged over and then each plane did the same and they
moved from echelon to V-formation and went away into the sky
in the direction of Segovia.

304

Keeping a heavy fire on the hilltop, Lieutenant Berrendo
pushed a patrol up to one of the bomb craters from where they
could throw grenades on to the crest. He was taking no chances
of anyone being alive and waiting for them in the mess that was
up there and he threw four grenades into the confusion of dead
horses, broken and split rocks, and torn yellow-stained explosive-
stinking earth before he climbed out of the bomb crater and
walked over to have a look.

No one was alive on the hilltop except the boy Joaquin, who
was unconscious under the dead body of Ignacio. Joaquin was
bleeding from the nose and from the ears. He had known nothing
and had no feeling since he had suddenly been in the \ery heart
of the thunder and the breath had been wrenched from his body
when the one bomb struck so close and Lieutenant Berrendo
made the sign of the cross and then shot him in the back of the
head, as quickly and as gently, if such an abrupt movement can
be gentle, as Sordo had shot the wounded horse.

Lieutenant Berrendo stood on the hilltop and looked down the
slope at his own dead and then across the country, seeing where
they had galloped before Sordo had turned at bay here. He
noticed all the dispositions that had been made of the troops and
then he ordered the dead men’s horses to be brought up and the
bodied tied across the saddles so that they might be packed into
La Granja.

‘Take that one, too,’ he said. ‘The one with his hands on the
automatic rifle. That should be Sordo. He is the oldest and it was
he with the gun. No. Cut the head off and wrap it in a poncho.’
He considered a minute. ‘You might as well take all the heads.
And of the others below on the slope and where we first found
them. Collect the rifles and pistols and pack that gun on a horse.*

Then he walked down to where the lieutenant lay who had
been killed in the first assault. He looked down at him but did
not touch him.

4 Que cosa mas mala es la guerra / he said to himself, which
meant, ‘What a bad thing war is.’

Then he made the sign of the cross again and as we walked
down the hill he said five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys for
the repose of the soul of his dead comrade. He did not wish to stay
to see his orders being carried out.

CHAPTER 28

After the planes went away Robert Jordan and Primitivo heard
the firing start and his heart seemed to start again with it. A cloud
of smoke drifted over the last ridge that he could see in the high
country and the planes were three steadily receding specks in the
sky.

‘They’ve probably bombed hell out of their own cavalry and
never touched Sordo and Company,’ Robert Jordan said to him-
self. ‘The damned planes scare you to death but they don’t kill
you.’

‘The combat goes on,* Primitivo said, listening to the heavy
firing. He had winced at each bomb thud and now he licked his
dry lips.

‘Why not?’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Those things never kill any-
body.’

Then the firing stopped absolutely and he did not hear another
shot. Lieutenant Berrendo’s pistol shot did not carry that far.

When the firing first stopped it did not affect him. Then as the
quiet kept on a hollow feeling came in his chest. Then he heard
the grenades burst and for a moment his heart rose. Then every-
thing was quiet again and the quiet kept on and he knew that it
was over.

Maria came up from the camp with a tin bucket of stewed hare
with mushrooms sunken in the rich gravy and a sack with bread,
a leather wine botde, four tin plates, two cups, and four spoons.
She stopped at the gun and ladled out two plates for Agustin and
Eladio, who had replaced Anselmo at the gun, and gave them
bread and unscrewed the horn tip of the wine bottle and poured
two cups of wine.

Robert Jordan watched her climbing lithely up to his lookout
post, the sack over her shoulder, the bucket in one hand, her
cropped head bright in the sun. He climbed down and took the
bucket and helped her up the last boulder.

‘What did the aviation do?’ she asked, her eyes frightened.

‘Bombed Sordo.’

306

He had the bucket open and was ladling out stew on to a plate.

‘Are they still fighting ?’

‘No. It is over.’

‘Oh,’ she said, and bit her lip and looked out across the country.

‘I have no appetite/ Primitivo said.

‘Eat anyway/ Robert Jordan told him.

‘I could not swallow food.’

‘Take a drink of this, man/ Robert Jordan said and handed him
the wine botde. ‘Then eat/

‘This of Sordo has taken away desire/ Primitivo said. ‘Eat,
thou. I have no desire/

Maria went over to him and put her arms around his neck and
kissed him.

‘Eat, old one/ she said. ‘Each one should take care of his
strength/

Primitivo turned away from her. He took the wine botde and
tipping his head back swallowed steadily while he squirted a jet
of wine into the back of his mouth. Then he filled his plate from
the bucket and commenced to eat.

Robert Jordan looked at Maria and shook his head. She sat
down by him and put her arm around his shoulder. Each knew
how the other felt and they sat there and Robert Jordan ate the
stew, taking time to appreciate the mushrooms completely, and
he drank the wine and they said nothing.

‘You may stay here, guapa, if you want/ he said after a while
when the food was all eaten.

‘Nay/ she said. ‘I must go to Pilar/

‘It is all right to stay here. I do not think that anything will
happen now/

‘Nay. I must go to Pilar. She is giving me instruction/

‘What does she give thee?’

‘Instruction/ She smiled at him and then kissed him. ‘Did you
never hear of religious instruction?’ She blushed. ‘It is something
like that/ She blushed again. ‘But different/

‘Go to thy instruction,’ he said and patted her on the head. She
smiled 4 at him again, then said to Primitivo, ‘Do you want any-
thing from below?’

‘No, daughter/ he said. They both saw that he was still not yet
recovered.

‘ Salud , old one/ she said to him.

307

‘Listen/ Primitive) said. ‘I have no fear to die but to leave them
alone thus — * his voice broke.

‘There was no choice/ Robert Jordan told him.

‘I know. Rut all the same —

‘There was no choice/ Robert Jordan repeated. ‘And now it is
better not to speak of it.*

‘Yes. Rut there alone with no aid from us

‘Much better not to speak of it/ Robert Jordan said. ‘And thou,
guapa , get thee to thy instruction.’

He watched her climb down through the rocks. Then he sat
there for a long time thinking and watching the high country.

Primitivo spoke to him but he did not answer. It was hot in the
sun but he did not notice the heat while he sat watching the hill
slopes and the long patches of pine trees that stretched up the
highest slope. An hour passed and the sun was far to his left now
when he saw them coming over the crest of the slope and he
picked up his glasses.

The horses showed small and minute as the first two riders
came into sight on the long green slope of the high hill. Then
there were four more horsemen coming down, spread out across
the wide hill, and then through his glasses he saw the double
column of men and horses ride into the sharp clarity of his vision.
As he watched them he felt sweat come from his armpits and run
down his flanks. One man rode at the head of the column. Then
came more horsemen. Then came the riderless horses with their
burdens tied across the saddles. Then there were two riders. Then
came the wounded with men walking by them as they rode. Then
came more cavalry to close the column.

Robert Jordan watched them ride down the slope and out of
sight among the trees. He could not see at that distance the load
one saddle bore of a long rolled poncho tied at each end and at
intervals so that it bulged between each lashing as a pod bulges
with peas. This was tied across the saddle and at each end it was
lashed to the stirrup leathers. Alongside this on the top of the
saddle the automatic rifle Sordo had served was lashed arrogantly.

Lieutenant Berrendo, who was riding at the head of the column,
his flankers out, his point pushed well forward, felt no arrogance.
He felt only the hollowness that comes after action. He was think-
ing ; taking the heads is barbarous. But proof and identification
is necessary. I will have trouble enough about this as it is and who

308

knows? This of the heads may appeal to them. There are those
of them who like such things. It is possible they will send them all
to Burgos. It is a barbarous business. The planes were muchos.
Much. Much. But we could have done it all, and almost without
losses, with a Stokes mortar. Two mules to carry the shells and a
mule with a mortar on each side of the pack saddle. What an
army we would be then ! With the fire power of all these auto-
matic weapons. And another mule. No, two mules to carry am-
munition. Leave it alone, he told himself. It is no longer cavalry.
Leave it alone. You’re building yourself an army. Next you will
want a mountain gun.

Then he thought of Julian, dead on the hill, dead now', tied
across a horse there in the first troop, and as he rode down into the
dark pine forest, leaving the sunlight behind him on the hill,
riding now in the quiet dark of the forest, he started to say a
prayer for him again.

‘Hail, holy queen mother of mercy/ he started. ‘Our life, our
sweetness and our hope. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourn-
ings, and weepings in this valley of tears — 9

He went on with the prayer, the horses 9 hoofs soft on the
fallen pine needles, the light coming through the tree trunks in
patches as it comes through the columns of a cathedral, and as he
prayed he looked ahead to see his flankers riding through the trees.

He rode out of the forest on to the yellow* road that led into La
Granja and the horses 9 hooves raised a dust that hung over them
as they rode. It powdered the dead who were tied face down
across the saddles and the wounded, and those who walked be-
side them, were in thick dust.

It was here that Anselmo saw them ride past in their dust.

He counted the dead and the wounded and he recognized
Sordo’s automatic rifle. He did not know what the poncho-
wrapped bundle was which flapped against the led horse’s flanks
as the stirrup leathers swung, but when on his way home, he came
in the dark on to the hill where Sordo had fought, he knew at
once what the long poncho roll contained. In the dark he could
not tell who had been up on the hill. But he counted those that lay
there and then made ofl across the hills for Pablo’s camp.

Walking alone in the dark, with a fear like a freezing of his
heart from the feeling the holes of the bomb craters had given
him, from them and from what he had found on the hill, he put

3°9

all thought of the next day out of his mind. He simply walked as
fast as he could to bring the news. And as he walked he prayed
for the souls of Sordo and of all his band. It was the first time he
had prayed since the start of the movement.

‘Most kind, most sweet, most clement Virgin/ he prayed.

But he cpuld not keep from thinking of the next day finally. So
he thought : I will do exactly as the Ingles says and as he says to
do it. But let me be close to him, O Lord, and may his instructions
be exact for I do not think that I could control myself under the
bombardment of the planes. Help me, O Lord, to-morrow to com-
port myself as a man should in his last hours. Help me, O Lord,
to understand clearly the needs of the day. Help me, O Lord, to
dominate the movement of my legs that I should not run when
the bad moment comes. Help me, O Lord, to comport myself as a
man to-morrow in the day of battle. Since I have asked this aid of
thee, please grant it, knowing I would not ask it if it were not
serious, and I will ask nothing more of thee again.

Walking in the dark alone he felt much better from having
prayed and he was sure, now, that he would comport himself
well. Walking now down from the high country, he went back to
praying for the people of Sordo and in a short time he had reached
the upper post where Fernando challenged him.

‘It is 1/ he answered, ‘Anselmo.’

‘Good,’ Fernando said.

‘You know of this of Sordo, old one?’ Anselmo asked Fernando,
the two of them standing at the entrance of the big rocks in the
dark.

‘Why not?’ Fernando said. ‘Pablo has told us.’

‘He was up there?’

‘Why not?’ Fernando said stolidly. ‘He visited the hill as soon
as the cavalry left.’

‘He told you — ’

‘He told us all/ Fernando said. ‘What barbarians these fascists
are! We must do away with all such barbarians in Spain.’ He
stopped, then said bitterly, ‘In them is lacking all conception of
dignity.’

Anselmo grinned in the dark. An hour ago he could not have
imagined that he would ever smile again. What a marvel, that
Fernando, he thought.

‘Yes/ he said to Fernando. ‘We must teach them. We must take
310

away their planes, their automatic weapons, their tanks, their
artillery, and teach them dignity.’

‘Exactly,’ Fernando said. ‘I am glad that you agree.*

Anselmo left him standing there alone with his dignity and
went on down to the cave.

CHAPTER 29

Anselmo found Robert Jordan sitting at the plank table inside
the cave with Pablo opposite him. They had a bowl poured full of
wine between them and each had a cup of wine on the table.
Robert Jordan had his notebook out and he was holding a pencil.
Pilar and Maria were in the back of the cave out of sight. There
was no way for Anselmo to know that the woman was keeping
the girl back there to keep her from hearing the conversation and
he thought that it was odd that Pilar was not at the table.

Robert Jordan looked up as Anselmo came in under the blanket
that hung over the opening. Pablo stared straight at the table. His
eyes were focused on the wine bowl but he was not seeing it,

T come from above,* Anselmo said to Robert Jordan.

‘Pablo has told us,* Robert Jordan said.

‘There were six dead on the hill and they had taken the heads,’
Anselmo said. ‘I was there in the dark.’

Robert Jordan nodded. Pablo sat there looking at the wine
bowl and saying nothing. There was no expression on his face
and his small pig-eyes were looking at the wine bowl as though
he had never seen one before.

‘Sit down,* Robert Jordan said to Anselmo.

The old man sat down at the table on one of the hide-covered
stools and Robert Jordan reached under the table and brought up
the pinch-bottle of whisky that had been the gift of Sordo. It was
about half full. Robert Jordan reached down the table for a cup
and poured a drink of whisky into it and shoved it along the table
to Anselmo.

‘Drink that, old one,* he said.

Pablo looked from the wine bowl to Anselmo*s face as he drank
and then he looked back at the wine bowl.

As Anselmo swallowed the whisky he felt a burning in his nose,

3H

his eyes, and his mouth, and then a happy, comforting warmth
in his stomach. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Then he looked at Robert Jordan and said, ‘Can I have an-
other ?’

‘Why not?* Robert Jordan said and poured another drink from
the bottle and handed it this time instead of pushing it.

This time there was not the burning when he swallowed but
the warm comfort doubled. It was as good a thing for his spirit as a
saline injection is for a man who has suffered a great haemorrhage.

The old man looked toward the bottle again.

‘The rest is for to-morrow/ Robert Jordan said. ‘What passed
on the road, old one?’

‘There was much movement,’ Anselmo said. ‘I have it all noted
down as you showed me. I have one watching for me and noting
now. Later I will go for her report.’

4 ‘Did you see anti-tank guns? Those on rubber tyres with the
long barrels?’

‘Yes,’ Anselmo said. ‘There were four camions which passed on
the road. In each of them there was such a gun with pine branches
spread across the barrels. In the trucks rode six men with each
gun.’

‘Four guns, you say?’ Robert Jordan asked him.

‘Four,’ Anselmo said. He did not look at his papers.

‘Tell me what else went up the road.’

While Robert Jordan noted Anselmo told him everything he
had seen move past him on the road. He told it from the begin-
ning and in order with the wonderful memory of those who can-
not read or write, and twice, while he was talking, Pablo reached
out for more wine from the bowl.

‘There was also the cavalry which entered La Granja from the
high country where El Sordo fought,’ Anselmo went on.

Then he told the number of the wounded he had seen and the
number of the dead across the saddles.

‘There was a bundle packed across one saddle that I did not
understand,’ he said. ‘But now I know it was the heads.’ He went
on without pausing. ‘It was a squadron of cavalry. They had only
one officer left. He was not the one who was here in the early
morning when you were by the gun. He must have been one of
the dead. Two of the dead were officers by their sleeves. They
were lashed face down over the saddles, their arms hanging. Also
312

they had the maquina of El Sordo tied to the saddle that bore the
heads. The barrel was bent. That is all/ he finished.

‘It is enough,’ Robert Jordan said and dipped his cup into the
wine bowl. ‘Who beside you has been through the lines to the side
of the Republic?’

‘Andres and Eladio.’

‘Which is the better of those two?’

‘Andres.’

‘How long would it take him to get to Navacerrada from here? *

‘Carrying no pack and taking his precautions, in three hours
with luck. We came by a longer, safer route because of the
material.’

‘He can surely make it?’

Wo se , there is no such thing as surely.’

‘Not for thee either?’

‘Nay.’

That decides that, Robert Jordan thought to himself. If he
had said that he could make it surely, surely I would have sent
him.

‘Andres can get there as well as thee?’

‘As well or better. He is younger.’

‘But this must absolutely get there.’

‘If nothing happens he will get there. If anything happens it
could happen to anyone.’

‘I will write a dispatch and send it by him,’ Robert Jordan said.
‘I will explain to him where he can find the General. He will be
at the Estado Mayor of the Division.’

‘He will not understand all this of divisions and all,’ Anselmo
said. ‘Always has it confused me. He should have the name of the
General and where he can be found.’

‘But it is at the Estado Mayor of the Division that he will be
found.’

‘But is that not a place? ’

‘Certainly it is a place, old one,’ Robert Jordan explained
patiently. ‘But it is a place the General will have selected. It is
where he will make his headquarters for the battle.’

‘Where is it then?’ Anselmo was tired and the tiredness was
making him stupid. Also words like brigades, divisions, army
corps confused him. First there had been columns, then there
were regiments, then there were brigades. Now there were brh

315

gades and divisions, both. He did not understand. A place was a
place,

‘Take it slowly, old one/ Robert Jordan said. He knew that if
he could not make Anselmo understand he could never explain it
clearly to Andres either. ‘The Estado Mayor of the Division is a
place the General will have picked to set up his organization to
command. He commands a division, which is two brigades. I do
not know where it is because I was not there when it was picked.
It will probably be a cave or dugout, a refuge, and wires will run
to it. Andres must ask for the General and for the Estado Mayor
of the Division. He must give this to the General or to the Chief
of his Estado Mayor or to another whose name I will write. One of
them wifi surely be there even if the others are out inspecting the
preparations for the attack. Do you understand now? ’

‘Yes/

‘Then get Andres and I will write it now and seal it with this
seal/ He showed him the small, round, wooden-backed rubber
stamp with the seal of the S.I.M. and the round, tin-covered ink-
ing pad no bigger than a fifty-cent piece he carried in his pocket.
‘That seal they will honour. Get Andres now and I will explain
to him. He must go quickly but first he must understand/

‘He will understand if I do. But you must make it very clear.
This of staffs and divisions is a mystery to me. Always have I gone
to such things as definite places such as a house. In Navacerrada
it is in the old hotel where the place of command is. In Guadar-
rama it is in a house with a garden/

‘With this General/ Robert Jordan said, ‘it will be some place
very close to the lines. It will be underground to protect it from
the planes. Andres will find it easily by asking, if he knows what
to ask for. He will only need to show what I have written. But
fetch him now for this should get there quickly/

Anselmo went out, ducking under the hanging blanket. Robert
Jordan commenced writing in his notebook.

‘Listen, IngUs / Pablo said, still looking at the wine bowl.

‘I am writing/ Robert Jordan said without looking up.

‘Listen, Ingles’ Pablo spoke directly to the wine bowl. ‘There
is no need to be disheartened in this. Without Sordo we have
plenty of people to take the posts and blow thy bridge/

‘Good/ Robert Jordan said without stopping writing.

‘Plenty/ Pablo said. ‘I have admired thy judgement much to-

m

day, Ingles * Pablo told the wine bowl. *1 think thou hast much
picardia. That thou art smarter than I am. I have confidence in
thee.’

Concentrating on his report to Goiz, trying to put it in the
fewest words and still make it absolutely convincing, trying to
put it so the attack would be cancelled, absolutely, yet convince
them he wasn’t trying to have it called off because of any fears
he might have about the danger of his own mission, but wished
only to put them in possession of all the facts, Robert Jordan was
hardly half listening.

‘ Ingles^ Pablo said.

‘I am writing,’ Robert Jordan told him without looking up.

I probably should send two copies, he thought. But if I do we
will not have enough people to blow it if I have to blow it. What
do I know about why this attack is made? Maybe it is* only a hold-
ing attack. Maybe they want to draw those troops from some-
where else. Perhaps they make it to draw those planes from the
North. Maybe that is what it is about. Perhaps it is not expected
to succeed. What do I know about it? This is my report to Goiz.
I do not blow the bridge until the attack starts. My orders are clear
and if the attack is called off I blow nothing. But I’ve got to keep
enough people here for the bare minimum necessary to carry the
orders out.

‘What did you say?’ he asked Pablo.

‘That I have confidence , Ingles' Pablo was still addressing the
wine bowl.

Man, I wish I had, Robert Jordan thought. He went on writing.

CHAPTER 30

So now everything had been done that there was to do that night.
All orders had been given. Everyone knew exacdy what he was
to do in the morning. Andres had been gone three hours. Either
it would come now with the coming of the daylight or it would
not come. I believe that it will come, Robert Jordan told himself,
walking back down from the upper post whele he had gone to
speak to Primitivo.

315

Golz makes the attack but he has not the power to cancel it. Per-
mission to cancel it will have to come from Madrid. The chances
are they won’t be able to wake anybody up there and if they do
wake up they will be too sleepy to think. I should have gotten the
word to Golz sooner of the preparations they have made to meet
the attack, but how could I send word about something until it
happened? They did not move up that stuff until just at dark.
They did not want to have any movement on the road spotted by
planes. But what about all their planes? What about those fascist
planes?

Surely our people must have been warned by them. But per-
haps the fascists were faking for another offensive down through
Guadalajara with them. There were supposed to be Italian troops
concentrated in Soria, and at Siguenza again besides those operat-
ing in the North. They haven’t enough troops or material to run
two major offensives at the same time though. That is impossible;
so it must be just a bluff.

But we know how many troops the Italians have landed all last
month and the month before at Cadiz. It is always possible they
will try again at Guadalajara, not stupidly as before, but with
three main fingers coming down to broaden it out and carry it
along the railway to the west of the plateau. There was a way that
they could do it all right. Hans had shown him. They made many
mistakes the first time. The whole conception was unsound. They
had not used any of the same troops in the Arganda offensive
against the Madrid- Valencia road that they used at Guadalajara.
Why had they not made those same drives simultaneously? Why?
Why? When would we know why?

Yet we have stopped them both times with the very same troops.
We never could have stopped them if they had pulled both drives
at once. Don’t worry, he told himself. Look at the miracles that
have happened before this. Either you will have to blow that
bridge in the morning or you will not have to. But do not start de-
ceiving yourself into thinking you won’t have to blow it. You will
blow it one day or you will blow it another. Or if it is not this
bridge it will be some other bridge. It is not you who decides what
shall be done. You follow orders. Follow them and do not try to
think beyond them.

The orders on this are very clear. Too very clear. But you must
not worry nor must you be frightened. For if you allow yourself

the luxury o£ normal fear that fear will infect those who must
work with you.

But that heads business was quite a thing all the same, he told
himself. And the old man running on to them on the hilltop
alone. How would you have liked to run into them like that?
That impressed you, didn’t it? Yes, that impressed you, Jordan.
You have been quite impressed more than once to-day. But you
have behaved O.K. So far you have behaved all right.

You do very well for an instructor in Spanish at the University
of Montana, he joked at himself. You do all right for that. But do
not start thinking that you are anything very special. You haven’t
gotten very far in this business. Just remember Duran, who never
had any military training and who was a composer and lad about
town before the movement and is now a damned good general
commanding a brigade. It was all as simple and easy to learn and
understand to Duran as chess to a child chess prodigy. You had
read on and studied the art of war ever since you were a hoy and
your grandfather had started you on the American Civil War.
Except that Grandfather always called it the War of the Rebel-
lion. But compared with Duran you were like a good sound chess
player against a boy prodigy. Old Duran. It would be good to see
Duran again. He would see him at Gaylord’s after this was over.
Yes. After this was over. See how well he was behaving?

ril see him at Gaylord’s, he said to himself again, after this is
over. Don’t kid yourself, he said. You do it all perfectly O.K.
Cold. Without kidding yourself. You aren’t going to see Duran
any more and it is of no importance. Don’t be that way either, he
told himself. Don’t go in for any of those luxuries.

Nor for heroic resignation either. We do not want any citizens
full of heroic resignation in these hills. Your grandfather fought
four years in our Civil War and you are just finishing your first
year in this war. You have a long time to go yet and you are very
well fitted for the work. And now you have Maria, too. Why,
you’ve got everything. You shouldn’t worry. What is a little brush
between a guerrilla band and a squadron of cavalry? That isn’t
anything. What if they took the heads? Does that make $ny dif-
ference? None at all.

The Indians always took the scalps when Grandfather was at
Fort Kearny after the war. Do you remember the cabinet in your
father’s office with the arrowheads spread out on a shelf, and the

3*7

eagle feathers of the war bonnets that hung on the wall, their
plumes slanting, the smoked buckskin smell of the leggings and
the shirts and the feel of the beaded moccasins? Do you remember
the great stave of the buffalo bow that leaned in a corner of the
cabinet and the two quivers of hunting and war arrows, and how
the bundle of shafts felt when you closed your hand around them ?

Remember something like that. Remember something concrete
and practical. Remember Grandfather's sabre, bright and well
oiled in its dented scabbard and Grandfather showed you how the
blade had been thinned from the many times it had been to the
grinder's. Remember Grandfather’s Smith and Wesson. It was a
single-action, officer’s model, .32 calibre and there was no trigger
guard. It had the softest, sweetest trigger pull you had ever felt
and it was always well oiled and the bore was clean although the
finish was all worn off and the brown metal of the barrel and the
cylinder was worn smooth from the leather of the holster. It was
kept in the holster with a U.S. on the flap in a drawer in the
cabinet with its cleaning equipment and two hundred rounds of
cartridges. Their cardboard boxes were wrapped and tied neatly
with waxed twine.

You could take the pistol out of the drawer and hold it. ‘Handle
it freely,' was Grandfather's expression. But you could not play
with it because it was ‘a serious weapon’.

You asked Grandfather once if he had ever killed anyone with
it and he said, ‘Yes.’

Then you said, ‘When, Grandfather?’ and he said, ‘In the War
of the Rebellion and afterwards.'

You said, ‘Will you tell me about it, Grandfather?’

And he said, ‘I do not care to speak about it, Robert.’

Then after your father had shot himself with this pistol and you
had come home from school and they’d had the funeral, the
coroner had returned it after the inquest saying, ‘Bob, I guess you
might want to keep the gun. I’m supposed to hold it, but I know
your dad set a lot of store by it because his dad packed it all
through the War, besides out here when he first came out with
the Cavalry, and it’s still a hell of a good gun. I had her out trying
her this afternoon. She don’t throw much of a slug but you can
hit things with her.’

He had put the gun back in the drawer in the cabinet where it
belonged, but the next day he took it out and he had ridden up to
318

the top of the high country above Red Lodge, with Chub, where
they had built the road to Cooke City now over the pass and across
the Bear Tooth plateau, and up there where the wind was thin
and there was snow all summer on the hills they had stopped by*
the lake which was supposed to be eight hundred feet deep and
was a deep green colour, and Chub held the two horses and he
climbed out on a rock and leaned over and saw his face in the still
water, and saw himself holding the gun, and then he dropped it,
holding it by the muzzle, and saw it go down making bubbles
until it was just as big as a watch charm in that clear tvater, and
then it was out of sight. Then he came back off the rock and when
he swung up into the saddle he gave old Bess such a clout with the
spurs she started to buck like an old rocking horse. He bucked
her out along the shore of the lake and as soon as she was reason-
able they went on back along the trail.

‘I know why you did that with the old gun, Bob/ Chub said.

‘Well, then we don’t have to talk about it,’ he had said.

They never talked about it and that was the end of Grand-
father’s side arms except for the sabre. He still had the sabre in his
trunk with the rest of his things at Missoula.

I wonder what Grandfather would think of this situation, he
thought. Grandfather was a hell of a good soldier, everybody said.
They said if he had been with Custer that day he never vt/ould
have let him be sucked in that way. How could he ever not have
seen the smoke nor the dust of all those lodges down there in the
draw along the Littie Big Horn unless there must have been a
heavy morning mist? But there wasn’t any mist.

I wish Grandfather were here instead of me. Well, maybe we
will be altogether by to-morrow night. If there should be any such
damn fool business as a hereafter, and I’m sure there isn’t, he
thought, I would certainly like to talk to him. Because there are a
lot of things I would like to know. I have a right to ask him now
because I have had to do the same sort of things myself. I don’t
think he’d mind my asking now. I had no right to ask before. I
understand him not telling me because he didn’t know me. But
now I think that we would get along all right. I’d like to be able
to talk to him now and get his advice. Hell, if I didn’t get advice
I’d just like to talk to him. It’s a shame there is such a jump in
time between ones like us.

Then, as he thought, he realized that if there was any such
319

thing as ever meeting, both he and his grandfather would be
acutely embarrassed by the presence of his father. Anyone has a
right to do it, he thought. But it isn’t a good thing to do. I under-
stand it, but I do not approve of it. Lache was the word. But you
do understand it? Sure, I understand it, but. Yes, but. You have to
be awfully occupied with yourself to do a thing like that.

Aw hell, I wish Grandfather was here, he thought. For about
an hour anyway. Maybe he sent me what little I have through that
other one that misused the gun. Maybe that is the only communi-
cation that we have. But, damn it. Truly, damn it, but I wish the
time-lag wasn’t so long so that I could have learned from him
what the other one never had to teach me. But suppose the fear he
had to go through and dominate and just get rid of finally in four
years of that and then in the Indian fighting, although in that,
mostly, there couldn’t have been so much fear, had made a
cobarde out of the other one the way second-generation bull-
fighters almost always are? Suppose that? And maybe the good
juice only came through straight again after passing through
that one?

I’ll never forget how sick it made me the first time I knew he
was a cobarde. Go on, say it in English. Coward. It’s easier when
you have it said and there is never any point in referring to a son
of a bitch by some foreign term. He wasn’t any son of a bitch,
though. He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any
man could have. Because if he wasn’t a coward he would have
stood up to that woman and not let her bully him. I wonder what
I would have been like if he had married a different woman?
That’s something you’ll never know, he thought, and grinned.
Maybe the bully in her helped to supply what was missing in the
other. And you. Take it a little easy. Don’t get to referring to the
good juice and such other things until you are through to-morrow.
Don’t be snotty too soon. And then don’t be snotty at all. We’ll
see what sort of juice you have to-morrow.

Sut he started thinking about Grandfather again.

‘George Custer was not an intelligent leader of cavalry, Robert,’
his grandfather had said. ‘He was not even an intelligent
man.’

He remembered that when his grandfather said that he felt re-
sentment that anyone should speak against that figure in the buck-
skin shirt, the yellow curls blowing, that stood on that hill hold-
320

in g a service revolver as the Sioux closed in around him In the old
Anheuser-Busch lithograph that hung on the poolroom wall in
Red Lodge.

‘He just had great ability to get himself in and out of trouble,’
his grandfather went on, ‘and on the Litde Big Horn he got into
it but he couldn’t get out.’

‘Now Phil Sheridan was an intelligent man and so was Jeb
Stuart. But John Mosby was the finest cavalry leader that ever
lived.’

He had a letter in his things in the trunk at Missoula from
General Phil Sheridan to old Killy-the-Horse Kilpatrick that said
his grandfather was a finer leader of irregular cavalry than John
Mosby,

I ought to tell Golz about my grandfather, he thought. He
wouldn’t ever have heard of him though. He probably never even
heard of John Mosby. The British all had heard of them though
because they had to study our Civil War much more than people
did on the Continent. Karkov said after this was over I could go
to the Lenin Institute in Moscow if I wanted to. He said I could
go to the military academy of the Red Army if I wanted to do
that. I wonder what Grandfather would think of that? Grand-
father, who never knowingly sat at a table with a Democrat in his
life.

Well, I don’t want to be a soldier, he thought. I know that. So
that’s out. I just want us to win this war. I guess really good sol-
diers are really good at very little else, he thought. That’s ob-
viously untrue. Look at Napqleon and Wellington. You’re very
stupid this evening, he thought.

Usually his mind was very good company and to-night it had
been when he thought about his grandfather. Then thinking of
his father had thrown him off. He understood his father and he
forgave him everything and he pitied him but he was ashamed of
him.

You better not think at all, he told himself. Soon you will be
with Maria and you won’t have to think. That’s the best way now
that everything is worked out. When you have been concentrat-
ing so hard on something you can’t stop and your brain gets to
racing like a fly-wheel with the weight gone. You’d better just
not think.

But just suppose, he thought. Just suppose that when the planes

3 21

unload they smash those anti-tank guns and just blow hell out of
the positions and the old tanks roll good up whatever hill it is for
once and old Golz boots that bunch of drunks, clochards , bums,
fanatics, and heroes that make up the Quatorzieme Brigade ahead
of him, and I know how good Duran’s people are in Golz’s other
brigade, and we are in Segovia to-morrow night.

Yes. Just suppose he said to himself. I’ll settle for La Granja, he
told himself. But you are going to have to blow that bridge, he
suddenly knew absolutely. There won’t be any calling off. Be-
cause the way you have just been supposing there for a minute is
how the possibilities of that attack look to those who have ordered
it. Yes, you will have to blow the bridge, he knew truly . Whatever
happens to Andres doesn’t matter.

Coming down the trail there in the dark, alone with the good
feeling that everything that had to be done was over for the next
four hours, and with the confidence that had come from thinking
back to concrete things, the knowledge that he would surely have
to blow the bridge came to him almost with comfort.

The uncertainty, the enlargement of the feeling of being un-
certain, as when, through a misunderstanding of possible dates,
one does not know whether the guests are really coming to a party,
that had been with him ever since he had dispatched Andres with
the report to Golz, had all dropped from him now. He was sure
now that the festival would not be cancelled. It’s much better to
be sure, he thought. It’s always much better to be sure.

CHAPTER 31

S o now they were in the robe again together and it was late in the
last night. Maria lay close against him and he felt the long smooth-
ness of her thighs against his and her breasts like two small hills
that rise out of the long plain where there is a well, and the far
country beyond the hills was the valley of her throat where his
lips were. He lay very quiet and did not think and she stroked his
head with her hand.

‘Roberto,’ Maria said very softly and kissed him. Tam ashamed.
I do not wish to disappoint thee but there is a great soreness and
much pain. I do not'think I would be any good to thee.’

322

‘There is always a great soreness and much pain,’ he said.
’Nay, rabbit. That is nothing. We will do nothing that makes
pain.

‘It is not that. It is that I am not good to receive thee as I wish
to.’ *

‘That is of no importance. That is a passing thing. We are to-
gether when we lie together.’

‘Yes, but I am ashamed. I think it was from when the things
were done to me that it comes. Not from thee and me/

‘Let us not talk of that/

‘Nor do I wish to. I meant I could not bear to fail thee now on
this night and so I sought to excuse myself/

‘Listen, rabbit,’ he said. ‘All such things pass and then there is
no problem/ But he thought; it was not good luck for the last
night.

Then he was ashamed and said, ‘Lie close against me, rabbit. I
love thee as much feeling thee against me in here in the dark as
I love thee making love/

‘I am deeply ashamed because I thought it might be again to-
night as it was in the high country when we came down from El
Sordo’s/

‘ Que va / he said to her. ‘That is not for every day. I like it thus
as well as the other/ He lied, putting aside disappointment. ‘We
will be here together quietly and we will sleep. Let us talk to-
gether. I know thee very little from talking/

‘Should we speak of to-morrow and of thy work? I would like
to be intelligent about thy work/

‘No/ he said and relaxed completely into the length of the robe
and lay now quietly with his cheek against her shoulder, his left
arm under her head. ‘The most intelligent is not to talk about to-
morrow nor what happened to-day. In this we do not discuss the
losses and what we must do to-morrow we will do. Thou are not
afraid?’

‘ Que vaj she said. ‘I am always afraid. But now I am afraid for
thee so much I do not think of me/

‘Thou must not, rabbit. I have been in many things. And worse
than this/ he lied.

Then suddenly surrendering to something, to the luxury of
going into unreality, he said, ‘Let us talk of Madrid and of us in
Madrid/

3 2 3

‘Good/ she said. Then, ‘Oh, Roberto, I am sorry I have failed
thee. Is there not some other thing that I can do for thee?’

He stroked her head and kissed her and then lay close and re-
laxed beside her, listening to the quiet of the night.

‘Thou*canst talk with me of Madrid,’ he said and thought : I’ll
keep any over-supply of that for to-morrow. I’ll need all of that
there is to-morrow. There are no pine needles that need that now
as I will need it to-morrow. Who was it cast his seed upon the
ground in the Bible? Onan. How did Onan turn out? he thought.
I don’t remember ever hearing any more about Onan. He smiled
in the dark.

Then he surrendered again and let himself slip into it, feeling a
voluptuousness of surrender into unreality that was like a sexual
acceptance of something that could come in the night when there
was no understanding, only the delight of acceptance.

‘My beloved,’ he said, and kissed her. ‘Listen. The other night I
was thinking about Madrid and I thought how I would get there
and leave thee at the hotel while I went up to see people at the
hotel of the Russians. But that was false. I would not leave thee at
any hotel.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I will take care of thee. I will not ever leave thee. I will
go with thee to the Seguridad to get papers. Then I will go with
thee to buy those clothes that are needed.’

‘They are few, and I can buy them.’

‘Nay, they are many and we will go together and buy good
ones and thou wilt be beautiful in them.’

‘I would rather we stayed in the room in the hotel and sent out
for the clothes. Where is the hotel?’

‘It is on the Plaza del Callao. We will be much in that room in
that hotel. There is a wide bed with clean sheets and there is hot
running water in the bathtub and there are two closets and I will
keep my things in one and thou wilt take the other. And there are
tall, wide windows that open, and outside, in the streets, there is
the spring. Also I know good places to eat that are illegal but with
good food, and I know shops where there is still wine and whisky.
And we will keep things to eat in the room for when we are hun-
gry and also whisky for when I wish a drink and I will buy thee
manzanilla.’

‘I would like to try the whisky.*

3^4

‘But since it is difficult to obtain and if thou likest manzanilla.’

‘Keep thy whisky, Roberto/ she said. ‘Oh, I love thee very
much. Thou and thy whisky that I could not have. What a pig
thou art.’

‘Nay, you shall try it. But it is not good for a woman.’

‘And I have only had things that were good for a woman,*
Maria said. ‘Then there in bed I will still wear my wedding shirt?*

‘Nay. I will buy thee various nightgowns and pyjamas too if
you should prefer them.’

‘I will buy seven wedding shirts,’ she said. ‘One for each day of
the week. And I will buy a clean wedding shirt for thee. Dost ever
wash thy shirt?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘I will keep everything clean and I will pour thy whisky and put
the water in it as it was done at Sordo’s. I will obtain olives and
salted cod-fish and hazel nuts for thee to eat while thou drinkest
and w6 will stay in the room for a month and never leave it. If I
am fit to receive thee,’ she said, suddenly unhappy.

‘That is nothing,’ Robert Jordan told her. ‘Truly it is nothing.
It is possible thou wert hurt there once and now there is a scar that
makes a further hurting. Such a thing is possible. All such things
pass. And also there are good doctors in Madrid if there is truly
anything.’

‘But all was good before,’ she said pleadingly.

‘That is the promise that all will be good again.*

‘Then let us talk again about Madrid.’ She curled her legs be-
tween his and rubbed the top of her head against his shoulder.
‘But will I not be so ugly there with this cropped head that thou
wilt be ashamed of me ? ’

‘Nay. Thou art lovely. Thou hast a lovely face and a beautiful
body, long and light, and thy skin is smooth and the colour of
burnt gold and everyone will try to take thee from me.’

‘Qu£ vdj take me from thee,’ she said. ‘No other man will ever
touch me till I die. Take me from thee ! Que va'

‘But many will try. Thou wilt see.’

‘They will see I love thee so that they will know it would be as
unsafe as putting their hands into a cauldron of melted lead to
touch me. But .thou? When thou seest beautiful women of the
same culture as thee? Thou wilt not be ashamed of me?’

‘Never. And I will marry thee.’

325

‘If you wish/ she said. ‘But since we no longer have the Church
I do not think it carries importance.’

‘I would like us to be married.’

‘If you wish. But listen. If we were ever in another country
where there still was the Church perhaps we could be married in
it there.’

‘In my country they still have the Church/ he told her. ‘There
we can be married in it if it means aught to thee. I have never been
married. There is no problem.’

‘I am glad thou hast never been married/ she said. ‘But I am
glad thou knowest about such things as you have told me for that
means thou hast been with many women and the Pilar told me
that it is only such men who are possible for husbands. But thou
wilt not run with other women now? Because it would kill me.’

‘I have never run with many women/ he said, truly. ‘Until thee
I did not think that I could love one deeply.’

She stroked his cheeks and then held her hands clasped behind
his head. ‘Thou must have known very many.’

‘Not to love them.’

‘Listen. The Pilar told me something -’

‘Say it.’

‘No. It is better not to. Let us talk again about Madrid.’

‘What was it you were going to say?’

‘I do not wish to say it.’

‘Perhaps it would be better to say it if it could be important.’

‘You think it is important?’

‘Yes.’

‘But how can you know when you do not know what it is?’

‘From thy manner.’

‘I will not keep it from you then. The Pilar told me that we
would all die to-morrow and that you know it as well as she does
and that you give it no importance. She said this not in criticism
but in admiration.’

‘She said that?’ he said. The crazy bitch, he thought, and he
said, ‘That is more of her gipsy manure. That is the way old
market women and cafe cowards talk. That is manuring obscen-
ity.’ He felt the sweat that came from under his armpits and slid
down between his arm and his side and he said to himself, ‘So you
are scared, eh?’ and aloud he said, ‘She is a manure-mouthed
superstitious bitch. Let us talk again of Madrid/

326

‘Then you know no such thing?*

‘G£ course not. Do not talk such manure/ he said, using a
stronger, ugly word.

But this time when he talked about Madrid there was no slip-
ping into make-believe again. Now he was just lying to his girl
and to himself to pass the night before batde and he knew it. He
liked to do it but all the luxury of the acceptance was gone. But he
started again.

‘I have thought about thy hair , 5 he said. ‘And what we can do
about it. You see it grows now all over thy head the same length
like the fur of an animal and it is lovely to feel that I love it very
much and it is beautiful and it flattens and rises like a wheat-
field in the wind when I pass my hand over it.*

‘Pass thy hand over it . 5

He did and left his hand there and went on talking to her throat
as he felt his own throat swell. ‘But in Madrid I thought we could
go together to the coiffeur’s and they could cut it neatly on the
sides and at the back as they cut mine and that way it would look
better in the town while it is growing out.*

‘I would look like thee , 5 she said and held him close to her.
‘And then I never would want to change it.*

‘Nay. It will grow all the time and that will only be to keep it
neat at the start while it is growing long. How long will it take
it to grow long?*

‘Really long?*

‘No. I mean to thy shoulders. It is thus I would have thee wear
it.*

‘As Garbo in the cinema?*

‘Yes/ he said thickly.

Now the making believe was coming back in a great rush and
he would take it all to him. It had him now, and again he sur-
rendered and went on. ‘So it will hang straight to thy shoulders
and curl at the ends as a wave of the sea curls, and it will be the
colour of ripe wheat and thy face the colour of burnt gold and
thine eyes the only colour they could be with thy hair and thy
skin, gold with the dark flecks in them, and I will push thy head
back and look in thy eyes and hold thee tight against me

‘Where?*

‘Anywhere. Wherever it is that we are. How long will it take
for thy hair to grow?*

3 2 7

‘I do not know because it never had been cut before. But I think
int six months it should be long enough to hang well below my
ears and in a year as long as thou couldst ever wish. But do you
know what will happen first?’

‘Tell me.*

‘We will be in the big clean bed in thy famous room in our
famous hotel and we will sit in the famous bed together and look
into the mirror of the armoire and there will be thee and there
will be me in the glass and then I will turn to thee thus, and put
my arms around thee thus, and then I will kiss thee thus.*

Then they lay quiet and close together in the night, hot-aching,
rigid, close together and holding her. Robert Jordan held closely
to all thoSe things that he knew could never happen, and he went
on with it deliberately and said, ‘Rabbit, we will not always live
in that hotel.*

‘Why not?*

‘We can get an apartment in Madrid on that street that runs
along the Parque of the Buen Retiro. I know an American woman
who furnished apartments and rented them before the movement
and I know how to get such an apartment for only the rent that
was paid before the movement. There are apartments there that
face on the park and you can see all the park from the windows;
the iron fence, the gardens, and the gravel walks and the green of
the lawns where they touch the gravel, and the trees deep with
shadows and the many fountains, and now the chestnut trees will
be in bloom. In Madrid we can walk in the park and row on the
lake if the water is back in it now.’

‘Why would the water be out?*

‘They drained it in November because it made a mark to sight
from when the planes came over for bombing. But I think that the
water is back in it now. I am not sure. But even if there is no
water in it we can walk through all the park away from the lake
and there is a part that is like a forest with trees from all parts of
the world with their names on them, with placards that tell what
trees they are, and where they came from.*

‘I would almost as soon go to the cinema,* Maria said. ‘But the
trees sound very interesting and I will learn them all with thee if
I can remember them.*

‘They are not as in a museum,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘They grow
naturally and there are hills in the park and part of the park is
328

like a jungle. Then below it there is the book fair where along the
sidewalks there are hundreds of booths with second-hand books
in them and now, since the movement, there are many books,
stolen in the looting of the houses which have been bombed and
from the houses of the fascists, and brought to the book fair by
those who stole them. I could spend all day every day at the stalls
of the book fair as I once did in the days before the movement, if
I ever could have any time in Madrid.’

‘While thou art visiting the book fair I will occupy myself with
the apartment,’ Maria said. ‘Will we have enough money for a
servant ? ’

‘Surely. I can get Petra who is at the hotel if she pleases thee.
She cooks well and is clean. I have eaten there with news-
papermen that she cooks for. They have electric stoves in their
rooms.*

‘If you wish her,’ Maria said. ‘Or I can find someone. But wilt
thou not be away much with thy work? They would not let me
go with thee on such work as this.’

‘Perhaps I can get work in Madrid. I have done this work now
for a long time and I have fought since the start of the movement.
It is possible that they would give me work now in Madrid. I have
never asked for it. I have always been at the front or in such
work as this.

‘Do you know that until I met thee I have never asked for any-
thing? Nor wanted anything? Nor thought of anything except
the movement and the winning of this war? Truly I have been
very pure in my ambitions. I have worked much and now I love
thee and,’ he said it now in a complete embracing of all that
would not be, ‘I love thee as I love all that we have fought for. I
love thee as I love liberty and dignity and the rights of all men
to work and not be hungry. I love thee as I love Madrid that we
have defended and as I love all my comrades that have died. And
many have died. Many. Many. Thou canst not think how many.
But I love thee as I love what I love most in the world and I love
thee more. I love thee very much, rabbit. More than I can tell
thee. But I say this now to tell thee a little. I have never had a wife
and now I have thee for a wife and I am happy/

‘I will make thee as good a wife as I can,’ Maria said. ‘Clearly
I am not well trained but I will try to make up for that. If we live
in Madrid; good. If we must live in any other place; good. If we

3 2 9

live nowhere and I can go with thee; better. If we go to thy coun-
try I will learn to talk Ingles like the most Ingles that there is.
I will study all their manners and as they do so will I do.’

‘Thou wilt be very comic.’

‘Surely. I will make mistakes but you will tell me and I will
never make them twice, or maybe only twice. Then in thy country
If thou art lonesome for our food I can cook for thee. And I will
go to a school to learn to be a wife, if there is such a school, and
study at it.’

‘There are such schools but thou dost not need that schooling.’

‘Pilar told me that she thought they exist in your country. She
had read of them in a periodical. And she told me also that I must
learn to speak Ingles and to speak it well so thou wouldst never
be ashamed of me.’

‘When did she tell you this?’

‘To-day while we were packing. Constantly she talked to me
about what I should do to be thy wife.’

I guess she was going to Madrid too, Robert Jordan thought,
and said, ‘What else did she say?’

‘She said I must take care of my body and guard the line of my
figure as though I were a bullfighter. She said this was of great
importance.’

‘It is,’ Robert Jordan* said. ‘But thou hast not to worry about
that for many years.’

‘No. She said those of our race must watch that always as it can
come suddenly. She told me she was once as slender as I but that
in those days women did not take exercise. She told me what
exercises I should take and that I must not eat too much. She told
me which things not to eat. But I have forgotten and must ask
her again.’

‘Potatoes,’ he said.

. ‘Yes,’ she went on. ‘It was potatoes and things that are fried.
Also when I told her about this of the soreness she said I must not
tell thee but must support the pain and not let thee know. But I
told thee because I do not wish to lie to thee ever and also I feared
that thou might think we did not have the joy in common any
longer and that other, as it was in the high country, had not truly
happened.’

‘It was right to tell me.’

‘Truly? For I am ashamed and I will do anything for thee that
330

thou should wish. Pilar has told me of things one can do for a
husband/

‘There is no need to do anything. What we have we have to-
gether and we will keep it and guard it. I love thee thus, lying be-
side thee and touching thee and knowing thou art truly there and
when thou art ready again we will have all/

‘But hast thou not necessities that I can care for? She explained
that to me/

‘Nay. We will have our necessities together. I have no necessi-
ties apart from thee/

‘That seems much better to me. But understand always that I
will do what you wish. But thou must tell me for I have great ig-
norance and much of what she told me I did not understand
clearly. For I was ashamed to ask and she is of such great and
varied wisdom/

‘Rabbit,’ he said. ‘Thou art very wonderful/

‘ Que va* she said. ‘But to try to learn all of that which goes into
wifehood in a day while we are breaking camp and packing for
a battle with another battle passing in the country above is a rare
thing and if I make serious mistakes thou must tell me for I love
thee. It could be possible for me to remember things incorrecdy
and much that she told me was very complicated/

‘What else did she tell thee ? ’

‘ Pues so many things I cannot remember them. She said I could
tell thee of what was done to me if I ever began to think of it
again because thou art a good man and already have understood
it all. But that it were better never to speak of it unless it came on
me as a black thing as it had been before and then that telling it
to thee might rid me of it/

‘Does it weigh on thee now?*

‘No. It is as though it had never happened since we were first
together. There is the sorrow for my parents always. But that
there will be always. But I would have thee know that which you
should know for thy own pride if I am to be thy wife. Never did
I submit to anyone. Always I fought and always it took two of
them or more to do me the harm. One would sit on my head and
hold me. I tell thee this for thy pride/

‘My pride is' in thee. Do not tell it/

‘Nay, I speak of thy own pride which it is necessary to have in
thy wife. And another thing. My father was the mayor of the

village and an honourable man. My mother was an honourable
woman and a good Catholic and they shot her with my father
because of the politics of my father who was a Republican. I saw
both of them shot and my father said, “ Viva la Republican when
they shot him standing against the wall of the slaughterhouse of
our village.

‘My mother standing against the same wall said, “Viva my
husband who was the Mayor of this village,” and I hoped they
would shoot me too and I was going to say “Viva la Republica y
vivan mis padres but instead there was no shooting but instead
the doing of the things.

‘Listen. I will tell thee- of one thing since it affects us. After
the shooting at the matadero they took us, those relatives who had
seen, it but were not shot, back from the matadero up the steep
hill into the main square of the town. Nearly all were weeping
but some were numb with what they had seen and the tears had
dried in them. I myself could not cry. I did not notice anything
that passed, for I could only see my father and my mother at the
moment of the shooting and my mother saying, “Long live my
husband who is Mayor of this village,” and this was in my head
like a scream that would not die but kept on and on. For my
mother was not a Republican and she would not say, “ Viva la
Republican but only Viva my father who lay there, on his face,
by her feet.

‘But what she had said, she had said very loud, like a shriek
and then they shot and she fell and I tried to leave the line to go
to her but we were all tied. The shooting was done by the guardia
civiles and they were still there waiting to shoot more when the
Falangist herded us away and up the hill leaving the guardia
civiles leaning on their rifles and leaving all the bodies there
against the wall. We were tied by the wrists in a long line of girls
and women and they herded us up by the hill and through the
streets to the square and in the square they stopped in front of
the barber-shop which was across the square from the city
hall.

‘Then the two men looked at us and one said, “That is the
daughter of the Mayor,” and the other said, “Commence with
her.”

‘Then they cut the rope that was on each of my wrists, one say-
ing to others of them, “Tie up the line,” and these two took me

33 2 .

by the arms and into the barber-shop and lifted me op and pot me
in the barbels chair and held me there.

‘I saw my face in the mirror of the barber-shop and the faces of
those who were holding me and the faces of three others who were
leaning over me and I knew none of their faces but in the glass I
saw myself and them, but they saw only me. And it was as though
one were in the dentist’s chair and there were many dentists and
they were all insane. My own face I could hardly recognize be-
cause my grief had changed it but I looked at it and knew that it
was me. But my grief was so great that I had no fear nor any feel-
ing but my grief.

‘At that time I wore my hair in two braids and as I watched in
the mirror one of them lifted one of the braids and pulled on it so
it hurt me suddenly through my grief and then cut it off close to
my head with a razor. And I saw myself with one braid and a
slash where the other had been. Then he cut off the other braid,
but without pulling on it and the razor made a small cut on my
ear and I saw blood come from it. Canst thou feel the scar with
thy finger?’

‘Yes. But would it be better not to talk of this?’

‘This is nothing. I will not talk of that which is bad. So he had
cut both braids close to my head with a razor and the others
laughed and I did not even feel the cut on my ear and then he
stood in front of me and struck me across the face with the braids
while the other two held me and he said, “This is how we make
Red nuns. This will show thee how to unite with thy proletarian
brothers. Bride of the Red Christ 1”

‘And he struck me again and again across the face with thfe
braids which had been mine and then he put the two of them in
my mouth and tied them tight around my neck, knotting them in
the back to make a gag and the two holding me laughed.

‘And all of them who saw it laughed and when I saw them
laugh in the mirror I commenced to cry because until then I had
been too frozen in myself from the shooting to be able to cry.

‘Then the one who had gagged me ran a clippers all over my
head; first from the forehead all the way to the back of the neck
and then across the top and then all over my head and close be-
hind my ears and they held me so I could see into the glass of the
barber’s mirror all the time that they did this and I could not be-
lieve it as I saw it done and I cried and I cried but I could not look

333

away from the horror that my face made with the mouth open
and the braids tied in it and my head coming naked under the
clippers,

‘And when the one with the clippers was finished he took a
bottle of iodine from the shelf of the barber (they had shot the
barber too for he belonged to a syndicate, and he lay in the door-
way of the shop and they had lifted me over him as they brought
me in) and with the glass wand that is in the iodine bottle he
touched me on the ear where it had been cut and the small pain
of that came through my grief and through my horror.

‘Then he stood in front of me and wrote U.H.P. on my fore-
head with the iodine, lettering it slowly and carefully as though
he were an artist and I saw all of this as it happened in the mirror
and I no longer cried for my heart was frozen in me for my father
and my mother and what happened to me now was nothing and
I knew it.

‘Then when he had finished the lettering, the Falangist stepped
back and looked at me to examine his work and then he put down
the iodine bottle and picked up the clippers and said, “Next,”
and they took me out of the barber-shop holding me tight by each
arm and I stumbled over the barber lying there still in the door-
way on his back with his grey face up, and we nearly collided with
Concepcion Gracia, my best friend, that two of them were bring-
ing in and when she saw me she did not recognize me, and then
she recognized me, and she screamed, and I could hear her
screaming all the time they were shoving me across the square,
and into the doorway, and up the stairs of the city hall' and into
the office of my father where they laid me on to the couch. And it
was there that the bad things were done.’

‘My rabbit,’ Robert Jordan said and held her as close and as
gently as he could. Rut he was as full of hate as any man could be.
‘Do not talk more about it. Do not tell me any more for I cannot
bear any hatred now,’

She was stiff and cold in his arms and she said, ‘Nay. I will
never talk more of it. But they are bad people and I would like to
kill some of them with thee if I could. But I have told thee this only
for thy pride if I am to be thy wife. So thou wouldst understand.’

‘I am glad you told me,’ he said. ‘For to-morrow, with luck, we
will kill plenty.’

‘But will we kill Falangists? It was they who did it.’

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‘They do not fight,’ he said gloomily. ‘They kill at the rear. It
is not them we fight in battle.*

‘But can we not kill them in some way? I would like to kill
some very much.*

‘I have killed them,’ he said. ‘And we will kill them again. At
the trains we have killed them.’

‘I would like to go for a train with thee,’ Maria said. ‘The time
of the train that Pilar brought me back from I was somewhat
crazy. Did she tell thee how I was?*

‘Yes. Do not talk of it.’

‘I was dead in my head with a numbness and all I could do was
cry. But there is another thing that I must tell thee. This I must.
Then perhaps thou wilt not marry me. But, Roberto, if thou
should not wish to marry me, can we not, then, just be always
together?*

‘I will marry thee.’

‘Nay. I had forgotten this. Perhaps you should not. It is possible
that I can never bear thee either a son or a daughter for the Pilar
says that if I could it would have happened to me with the things
which were done. I must tell thee that. Oh, I do not know why I
had forgotten that.’

‘It is of no importance, rabbit,’ he said. ‘First it may not be true.
That is for a doctor to say. Then I would not wish to bring either
a son or a daughter into this world as this world is. And also you
take all the love I have to give.’

‘I would like to bear thy son and thy daughter,’ she told him.
‘And how can the world be made better if there are no children
of us who fight against the fascists?’ ,

‘Thou,’ he said. ‘I love thee. Hearest thou? And now we mtefc ;
sleep, rabbit. For I must be up long before daylight and the dartre*
comes early in this month.’

‘Then is it all right about the last thing I said? We can still be
married?’

‘We are married, now. I marry thee now. Thou art my wife.
But go to sleep, my rabbit, for there is litde time now.’

‘And we will truly be married? Not just a talking?’

‘Truly.’

‘Then I will sleep and think of that if I wake.’

‘I, too.’

‘Good night, my husband.’

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"Good night/ he said. "Good night, wife.’

He heard her breathing steadily and regularly now and he
knew she was asleep and he lay awake and very still, not wanting
to waken her by moving. He thought o£ all the part she had not
told him and he lay there hating and he was pleased there would
be killing in the morning. But I must not take any of it personally,
he thought.

Though how can I keep from it? I know that we did dreadful
things to them too. But it was because we were uneducated and
knew no better. But they did that on purpose and deliberately.
Those who did that are the last flowering of what their education
has produced. Those are the flowers of Spanish chivalry. What a
people they have been. What sons of bitches from Cortez, Pizarro,
Menendez de Avila all down through Enrique Lister to Pablo.
And what wonderful people. There is no finer and no worse
people in the world. No kinder people and no crueller. And who
understands them? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.
To understand is to forgive. That’s not true. Forgiveness has been
exaggerated. Forgiveness is a Christian idea and Spain has never
been a Christian country. It has always had its own special idol
worship within the Church. Otra Virgen mas , I suppose that was
why they had to destroy the virgins of their enemies. Surely it was
deeper with them, with the Spanish religion fanatics, than it was
with the people. The people had grown away from the Church
because the Church was in the government and the government
had always been rotten. This was the only country that the refor-
mation never reached. They were paying for the Inquisition now,
all right.

Well, it was something to think about. Something to keep your
mind from worrying about your work. It was sounder than pre-
tending. God, he had done a lot of pretending to-night. And Pilar
had been pretending all day. Sure. What if they were killed to-
morrow? What did it matter as long as. they did the bridge
properly? That was all they had to do to-morrow.

It didn’t. You couldn’t do these things indefinitely. But you
weren’t supposed to live for ever. Maybe I have had all my life in
three days, he thought. If that’s true I wish we would have spent
the last night differently. But last nights are never any good. Last
nothings are any good. Yes, last words were good sometimes.

* Viva my husband who was Mayor of this town* was good.

336

He knew it was good because it made a tingle run all over him
when he said it to himself. He leaned over and kissed Maria who
did not wake. In English he whispered very quiedy, Td like to
marry you, rabbit. I’m very proud of your family.’

CHAPTER 32

On that same night in Madrid there were many people at the
Hotel Gaylord. A car pulled up under the porte-cochere of the
hotel, its headlights painted over with blue calcimine and a little
man in black riding boots, grey riding breeches, and a short, grey
high-buttoned jacket stepped out and returned the salute of the
two sentries as he opened the door, nodded to the secret police-
man who sat at the concierge’s desk, and stepped into the ele-
vator. There were two sentries seated on chairs inside the door,
one on each side of the marble entrance hall, and these only
looked up as the littie man passed them at the door of the elevator.
It was their business to feel everyone they did not know along the
flanks, under the armpits, and over the hip pockets to see if the
person entering carried a pistol and, if he did, have him leave it
with the concierge. But they knew the short man in riding boots
very well and they hardly looked up as he passed.

The apartment where he lived in Gaylord’s was crow’ded as he
entered. People were sitting and standing about and talking to-
gether as in any drawing-room and the men and the women were
drinking vodka, whisky and soda, and beer from the small glasses
filled from great pitchers. Four of the men were in uniform. The
others wore wind-breakers or leather jackets and three of the four
women were dressed in ordinary street dresses while the fourth,
who was haggardly thin and dark, wore a sort of severely cut
militiawoman’s uniform with a skirt with high boots under it.

When he came into the room, Karkov went at once to the
woman in the uniform and bowed to her and shook hands. She
was his wife and he said something to her in Russian that no one
could hear and for a moment the insolence that had been in his
eyes as he entered the room was gone. Then it lighted again as he
saw the mahogany-coloured head and the love-lazy face of the
well-constructed girl who was his mistress and he strode with

337

short, precise steps over to her and bowed and shook her hand in
such a way that no one could tell it was not a mimicry of his
greeting to his wife. His wife had not looked after him as he
walked across the room. She was standing with a tall, good-look-
ing Spanish officer and they were talking Russian now.

‘Your great love is getting a little fat,’ Karkov was saying to
the girl. ‘All of our heroes are fattening now as we approach the
second year.’ He did not look at the man he was speaking of.

‘You are so ugly you would be jealous of a toad,’ the girl told
him cheerfully. She spoke in German. ‘Can I go with thee to the
offensive to-morrow ? 5

‘No. Nor is there one,’

‘Everyone knows about it,’ the girl said. ‘Don’t be so mysterious.
Dolores is going. I will go with her or Carmen. Many people are
going.’

‘Go with whoever will take you,’ Karkov said. ‘I will not.’

Then he turned to the girl and asked seriously, ‘Who told thee
of it? Be exact.’

‘Richard,’ she said as seriously.

Karkov shrugged his shoulders and left her standing.

‘Karkov,’ a man of middle height with a grey, heavy, sagging
face, puffed eye pouches, and a pendulous under-lip, called to
him in a dyspeptic voice. ‘Have you heard the good news?’

Karkov went over to him and the man said, ‘I only have it now.
Not ten minutes ago. It is wonderful. All day the fascists have
been fighting among themselves near Segovia. They have been
forced to quell the mutinies with automatic rifle and machine-
gun fire. In the afternoon they were bombing their own troops
with planes.*

‘Yes?’ asked Karkov.

‘That is true,’ the puffy-eyed man said. ‘Dolores brought the
news herself. She was here with the news and was in such a state
of radiant exultation as I have never seen. The truth of the news
shone from her face. That great face — * he said happily.

‘That great face,’ Karkov said with no tone in his voice at all.

‘If you could have heard her,’ the puffy-eyed man said. ‘The
news itself shone from her with a light that was not of this world.
In her voice you could tell the truth of what she said. I am putting
it in an article for Izvestia. It was one of the greatest moments of
the war to me when I heard the report in that great voice where

338

pity, compassion, and truth are blended. Goodness and truth
shine from her as from a true saint of the people. Not for nothing
is she called La Pasionaria.’

‘Not for nothing/ Karkov said in a dull voice. ‘You’d better
write it for Izvestia now, before you forget that last beautiful
lead/

‘That is a woman that is not to joke about. Not even by a cynic
like you,’ the puffy-eved man said. ‘If you could have been here
to hear her and to see her face/

‘That great voice/ Karkov said. ‘That great face. Write it/ he
said. ‘Don’t tell it to me. Don’t waste whole paragraphs on me.
Go and write it now.”

‘Not just now/

‘I think you’d better/ Karkov said and looked at him, and then
looked away. The puffy-eyed man stood there a couple of minutes
more holding his glass of vodka, his eyes, puffy as they were, ab-
sorbed in the beauty of what he had seen and heard and then he
left the room to write it.

Karkov went over to another man of about forty-eight, who
was short, chunky, jovial-looking with pale blue eyes, thinning
blond hair, and a gay mouth under a bristly yellow moustache.
This man was in uniform. He was a divisional commander and
he was a Hungarian.

‘Were you here when the Dolores was here?’ Karkov asked the
man.

‘Yes.’

‘What was the stuff?’

‘Something about the fascists fighting among themselves. Beau-
tiful if true.’

‘You hear much talk of to-morrow.’

‘Scandalous. All the journalists should be shot as well as most
of the people in this room and certainly the intriguing German
unmentionable of a Richard. Whoever gave that Sunday {higgler
command of a brigade should be shot. Perhaps you and me should
be shot too. It is possible/ the General laughed. ‘Don’t suggest it
though.’

‘That is a thing I never like to talk about/ Karkov said. ‘That
American who comes here sometimes is over there. You know
the one, Jordan, who is with the partizan group. He is there
where this business they spoke of is supposed to happen.’

339

‘Well, he should have a report through on it to-night then,
the General said. ‘They don’t like me down there or I’d go down
and find out for you. He works with Golz on this, doesn’t he?
You’ll see Golz to-morrow.’

‘Early to-morrow.’

‘Keep out of his way until it’s going well,’ the General said. ‘He
hates you bastards as much as I do. Though he has a much better
temper.’

‘But about this — ’

‘It was probably the fascists having manoeuvres,’ the General
grinned. ‘Well, we’ll see if Golz can manoeuvre them a little. Let
Golz try his hand at it. We manoeuvred them at Guadalajara.’

‘I hear you are travelling too,’ Karkov said, showing his bad
teeth as he smiled. The General was suddenly angry.

‘And me too. Now is the mouth on me. And on all of us always.
This filthy sewing circle of gossip. One man who could keep his
mouth shut could save the country if he believed he could.’

‘Your friend Prieto can keep his mouth shut.’

‘But he doesn’t believe he can win. How can you win without
belief in the people?’

‘You decide that,’ Karkov said. ‘I am going to get a little
sleep.’

He left the smoky, gossip-filled room and went into the back
bedroom and sat down on the bed and pulled his boots off. He
could still hear them talking so he shut the door and opened the
window. He did not bother to undress because at two o’clock he
would be starting for the drive by Colmenar, Cerceda, and Nava-
cerrada up to the front where Golz would be attacking in the
morning.

CHAPTER 33

It was two o’clock in the morning when Pilar waked him. As
her hand touched him he thought, at first, it was Maria and he
rolled toward her and said, ‘Rabbit.’ Then the woman’s big hand
shook his shoulder and he was suddenly, completely and abso-
lutely awake and his hand was around the butt of the pistol that
lay alongside of his bare right leg and all of him was as cocked
as the pistol with its safety catch slipped off,

340

In the dark he saw it was Pilar and he looked at the dial of his
wrist watch with the two hands shining in the short angle close
to the top and seeing it was only two, he said, ‘What passes with
thee, woman?’

‘Pablo is gone,’ the big woman said to him.

Robert Jordan put on his trousers and shoes. Maria had not
waked.

‘When?’ he asked.

‘It must be an hour.’

‘And ? ’

‘He has taken something of thine,’ the woman said miserably.

‘So. What?’

‘I do not know,’ she told him. ‘Come and see.*

In the dark they walked over to the entrance of the cave, ducked
under the blanket, and went in. Robert Jordan followed her in the
dead-ashes, bad-air, and sleeping-men smell of the cave, shining
his electric torch so that he would not step on any of those who
were sleeping on the floor. Anselmo woke and said, ‘Is it timer’

‘No,’ Robert Jordan whispered. ‘Sleep, old one.’

The two sacks were at the head of Pilar’s bed which was
screened off with a hanging blanket from the rest of the cave. The
bed smelt stale and sweat-dried and sickly-sweet the way an In-
dian’s bed does as Robert Jordan knelt on it and shone the torch
on the two sacks. There was a long slit from top to bottom in each
one. Holding the torch in his left hand, Robert Jordan felt in the
first sack with his right hand. This was the one that he carried his
robe in and it should not be very full. It was not very full. There
was some wire in it still but the square wooden box of the ex-
ploder was gone. So was the cigar box with the carefully wrapped
and packed detonators. So was the screw-top tin with the fuse
and the caps.

Robert Jordan felt in the other sack. It was still full of ex-
plosive. There might be one packet missing.

He stood up and turned to the woman. There is a hollow,
empty feeling that a man can have when he is waked too early in
the morning that is almost like the feeling of disaster and he had
this multiplied a thousand times.

‘And this is what you call guarding one’s materials,’ he said.

‘I slept with my head against them and one arm touching
them,’ Pilar told him.

341

‘You slept well.’

‘Listen/ the woman said. ‘He got up in the night and I said,
“Where do you go, Pablo?” “To urinate, woman,” he told me
and I slept again. When I woke again I did not know what time
had passed but I thought, when he was not there, that he had
gone down to look at the horses as was his custom. Then/ she
finished miserably, ‘when he did not come I worried and when I
worried I felt of the sacks to be sure all was well and there were
the slit places and I came to thee/

‘Come on/ Robert Jordan said.

They were outside now and it was still so near the middle of
the night that you could not feel the morning coming.

‘Can he get out with the horses other ways than by the sentry?’

‘Two ways/

‘Who’s at the top?’

‘Eladio/

Robert Jordan said nothing more until they reached the meadow
where the horses were staked out to feed. There were three horses
feeding in the meadow. The big bay and the grey were gone.

‘How long ago do you think it was he left you? ’

‘It must have been an hour/

‘Then that is that/ Robert Jordan said. ‘I go to get what is left
of my sacks and go back to bed/

‘I will guard them/

‘Que va , you will guard them. You’ve guarded them once
already.*

‘ Ingles / the woman said, ‘I feel in regard to this as you do.
There is nothing I would not do to bring back thy property.
You have no need to hurt me. We have both been betrayed by
Pablo/

As she said this Robert Jordan realized that he could not afford
the luxury of being bitter, thrt he could not quarrel with this
woman. He had to work with this woman on that day that was
already two hours and more gone.

He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘It is nothing, Pilar/ he told
her. ‘What is gone is of small importance. We shall improvise
something that will do as well/

‘But what did he take?’

‘Nothing, woman. Some luxuries that one permits, oneself.’

‘Was it part of thy mechanism for the exploding? *

342

‘Yes. But there are other ways to do the exploding. Tell me,
did Pablo not have caps and fuser Surely they would have
equipped him with those.’

‘He has taken them,’ she said miserably. ‘I looked at once for
them. They are gone, too.’

They walked back through the woods to the entrance of the
cave.

‘Get some sleep,’ he said. ‘We are better off with Pablo gone.’

‘I go to see Eladio.’

‘He will have gone another way.’

‘I go anyway. I have betrayed thee with my lack of smartness.*

‘Nay,’ he said. ‘Get some sleep, woman. We must be under
way at four.’

He went into the cave with her and brought out the two sacks,
carrying them held together in both arms so that nothing could
spill from the slits.

‘Let me sew them up.’

‘Before we start,’ he said softly. ‘I take them not against you
but so that I can sleep.’

‘I must have them early to sew them.’

‘You shall have them early,’ he told her. ‘Get some sleep,
woman.’

‘Nay,’ she said. ‘I have failed thee and I have failed the Re-
public.’

‘Get thee some sleep, woman,’ he told her gently. ‘Get thee
some sleep.’

CHAPTER 34

The fascists held the crests of the hill here. Then there was a
valley that no one held except for a fascist post in a farmhouse
with its outbuildings and its barn that they had fortified. Andres,
on his way to Golz with the message from Robert Jordan, made
a wide circle around this post in the dark. He knew where there
was a trip wire laid that fired a set-gun and he located it in the
dark, stepped over it, and started along the small stream bordered
with poplars whose leaves were moving with the night wind. A
cock crowed at the farmhouse that was the fascist post and as he
walked along the stream he looked back and saw, through the

343

trunks of the poplars, a light showing at the lower edge of one of
the windows of the farmhouse. The night was quiet and clear and
Andres left the stream and struck across the meadow.

There were four haycocks in the meadow that had stood there
ever since the fighting in July of the year before. No one had ever
carried the hay away, and the four seasons that had passed had
flattened the cocks and made the hay worthless.

Andres thought what a waste it was as he stepped over a trip
wire that ran between two of the haycocks. But the Republicans
would have had to carry the hay up the steep Guadarrama slope
that rose beyond the meadow and the fascists did not need it, I
suppose, he thought.

They have all the hay they need and all the grain. They have
much, he thought. But we will give them a blow to-morrow
morning. To-morrow morning we will give them something for
Sordo. What barbarians they are ! But in the morning there will
be dust on the road.

He wanted to get this message-taking over and be back for the
attack on the posts in the morning. Did he really want to get back
though or did he only pretend he wanted to be back ? He knew
the reprieved feeling he had felt when the Ingles had told him
he was to go with the message. He had faced the prospect of the
morning calmly. It was what was to be done. He had voted for it
and would do it. The wiping out of Sordo had impressed him
deeply. But, after all, that was Sordo. That was not them. What
they had to do they would do.

But when the Ingles had spoken to him of the message he had
felt the way he used to feel when he was a boy and he had
wakened in the morning of the festival of his village and heard it
raining hard so that he knew that it would be too wet and that
the bull-baiting in the square would be cancelled.

He loved the bull-baiting when he was a boy and he looked for-
ward to it and to the moment when he would be in the square in
the hot sun and the dust with the carts ranged ill around to close
the exits and to make a closed place into which the bull would
come, sliding down out of his box, braking with all four feet,
when they pulled the end-gate up. He looked forward with ex-
citement, delight, and sweating fear to the moment when, in the
square, he would hear the clatter of the bull’s horns knocking
against the wood of his travelling box, and then the sight of him

344

as he came, sliding, braking out into the square, his head up, his
nostrils wide, his ears twitching, dust in the sheen of his black
hide, dried crut splashed on his flanks, watching his eyes set wide
apart, unblinking eyes under the widespread horns as smooth and
solid as driftwood polished by the sand, the sharp tips uptilted so
that to see them did something to your heart.

He looked forward all the year to that moment when the bull
would come out into the square on that day when you watched
his eyes while he made his choice of whom in the square he would
attack in that sudden head-lowering, horn-reaching, quick cat-
gallop that stopped your heart dead when it started. He had
looked forward to that moment all the year when he was a boy;
but the feeling when the Ingles gave the order about the message
was the same as when you woke to hear the reprieve of the rain
falling on the slate roof, against the stone wall, and into the pud-
dles on the dirt street of the village.

He had always been very brave with the bull in those village
capeas , as brave as any in the village or of the other near-by vil-
lages, and not for anything would he have missed it any year al-
though he did not go to the capeas of other villages. He was able
to wait still when the bull charged and only jumped aside at the
last moment. He waved a sack under his muzzle to draw him off
when the bull had someone down and many times he had held
and pulled on the horns when the bull had someone on the ground
and pulled sideways on the horn, had slapped and kicked him in
the face until he left the man to charge someone else.

He had held the bull’s tail to pull him away from a fallen man,
bracing hard and pulling and twisting. Once he had pulled the
tail around with one hand until he could reach a horn with the
other and when the bull had lifted his head to charge him he had
run backwards, circling with the bull, holding the tail in one hand
and the horn in the other until the crowd had swarmed on to the
bull with their knives and stabbed him. In the dust and the heat,
the shouting, the bull and man and wine smell, he had been in the
first of the crowd that threw themselves on to the bull and he
knew the feeling when the bull rocked and bucked under him
and he lay across the withers with one arm locked around the base
of the horn and his hand holding the other horn tight, his fingers
locked as his body tossed and wrenched and his left arm felt as
though it would tear from the socket while he lay on the hot,,

345

dusty, bristly, tossing slope of muscle, the ear clenched tight in his
teeth, and drove his knife again and again and again into the
swelling, tossing bulge of the neck that was now spouting hot on
his fist as he let his weight hang on the high slope of the withers
and banged and banged into the neck.

The first time he had bit the ear like that and held on to it, his
neck and jaws stiffened against the tossing, they had all made fun
of him afterwards. But though they joked him about it they had
great respect for him. And every year after that he had to repeat
it. They called him the bulldog of Villaconejos and joked about
him eating cattle raw. But everyone in the village looked forward
to seeing him do it and every year he knew that first the bull
would come out, then there would be the charges and the tossing,
and then when they yelled for the rush for the killing he would
place himself to rush through the other attackers and leap for his
hold. Then, when it was over, and the bull settled and sunk dead
finally under the weight of the killers, he would stand up and
walk away ashamed of the ear part, but also as proud as a man
could be. And he would go through the carts to wash his hands at
the stone fountain and men would clap him on the back and hand
him wineskins and say, ‘Hurray for you. Bulldog. Long life to
your mother/

Or they would say, ‘That’s what it is to have a pair of cojones !
Year after year 1’

Andres would be ashamed, empty-feeling, proud, and happy,
and he would shake them all off, and wash his hands and his right
arm and wash his knife well and then take one of the wineskins
and rinse the ear-taste out of his mouth for that year; spitting the
wine on the stone flags of the plaza before he lifted the wineskin
high and let the wine spurt into the back of his mouth.

Surely. He was the Bull Dog of Villaconejos and not for any-
thing would he have missed doing it each year in his village. But
he knew there was no better feeling than that one the sound of
the rain gave when he knew he would not have to do it.

But I must go back, he told himself. There is no question but
that I must go back for the affair of the posts and the bridge. My
brother Eladio is there, who is of my own bone and flesh, An-
selmo, Primitivo, Fernando, Agustln, Rafael, though clearly he
is not serious, the two women, Pablo, and the Ingles , though the
IngUs does not count since he is a foreigner and under orders.

346

They are all in for it. It is impossible that I should escape this
proving through the accident of a message. I must deliver this
message now quickly and well and then make all haste to return
in time for the assault on the posts. It would be ignoble of me not
to participate in this action because of the accident of this mes-
sage. That could not be clearer. And besides, he told himself, as
one who suddenly remembers that there will be pleasure too in
an engagement only the onerous aspects of which he has been
considering, and besides I will enjoy the killing of some fascists.
It has been too long since we have destroyed any. To-morrow can
be a day of much valid action. To-morrow can be a day of con-
crete acts. To-morrow can be a day which is worth something.
That to-morrow should come and that I should be there.

Just then, as kneedeep in the gorse he climbed the steep slope
that led to the Republican lines, a partridge flew up from under
his feet, exploding in a whirr of wingbeats in the dark and he felt
a sudden breath-stopping fright. It is the suddenness, he thought.
How can they move their wings that fast? She must be nesting
now. I probably trod close to the eggs. If there were not this war
I would tie a handkerchief to the bush and come back in the day-
time and search out the nest and I could take the eggs and put
them under a setting hen and when they hatched we would have
little partridges in the poultry yard and I would watch them grow
and, when they were grown, Fd use them for callers. I wouldn’t
blind them because they would be tame. Or do you suppose they
would fly off? Probably. Then I would have to blind them.

But I don’t like to do that after I have reared them. I could clip
the wings or tether them by one leg when I used them for calling.
If there was no war I would go with Eladio to get crayfish from
that stream back there by the fascist post. One time we got four
dozen from that stream in a day: If we go to the Sierra de Gredos
after this of the bridge there are fine streams there for trout and
for crayfish also. I hope we go to Gredos, he thought. We could
make a good life in Gredos in the summer time and in the fall
but it would be terribly cold in winter. But by winter maybe we
will have won the war.

If our father had not been a Republican both Eladio and I
would be soldiers now with the fascists and if one were a soldier
with them then there would be no problem. One would obey
orders and one would live or die and in the end it would be how-

347

ever it would be. It was easier to live under a regime than to
fight it.

But this irregular fighting was a thing of much responsibility.
There was much worry if you were one to worry. Eladio thinks
more than I do. Also he worries. I believe truly in the cause and I
do not worry. But it is a life of much responsibility.

I think that we are born into a time of great difficulty, he
thought. I think any other time was probably easier. One suffers
little because ail of us have been formed to resist suffering. They
who suffer are unsuited to this climate. But it is a time of difficult
decisions. The fascists attacked and made our decision for us. We
fight to live. But I would like to have it so that I could tie a hand-
kerchief to that bush back there and come in the daylight and
take the eggs and put them under a hen and be able to see the
chicks of the partridge in my own courtyard. I would like such
small and regular things.

But you have no house and no courtyard to your no-house, he
thought. You have no family but a brother who goes to battle to-
morrow and you own nothing but the wind and the sun and an
empty belly. The wind is small, he thought, and there is no sun.
You have four grenades in your pocket but they are only good to
throw away. You have a carbine on your back but it is only good
to give away bullets. You have a message to give away. And
you’re full of crap that you can give to the earth, he grinned in
the dark. You can anoint it also with urine. Everything you have
is to give. Thou art a phenomenon of philosophy and an unfor-
tunate man, he told himself and grinned again.

But j:or all his noble thinking a litde while before there was in
him that reprieved feeling that had always come with the sound
of rain in the village on the morning of the fiesta. Ahead of him
now at the top of the ridge was the government position where
he knew he would be challenged.

348

CHAPTER 35

Robert Jordan lay in the robe beside the girl Maria who was
still sleeping. He lay on his side turned away from the girl and he
felt her long body against his back and the touch of it now was
just an irony. You, you, he raged at himself. Yes, you. You told
yourself the first time you saw him that when he would be
friendly would be when the treachery would come. You damned
fool. You utter blasted damned fool. Chuck all that. That’s not
what you have to do now.

What are the chances that he hid them or threw them away?
Not so good. Besides you’d never find them in the dark. He would
have kept them. He took some dynamite, too. Oh, the dirty, vile,
treacherous sod. The dirty rotten crut. Why couldn’t he have just
mucked off and not have taken the exploder and the detonators?
Why was I such an utter goddamned fool as to leave them with
that bloody woman? The smart, treacherous ugly bastard. The
dirty cahron .

Cut it out and take it easy, he told himself. You had to take
chances and that was the best there was. You’re just mucked, he
told himself. You’re mucked for good and higher than a kite.
Keep your damned head and get the anger out and stop this cheap
lamenting like a damned wailing wall. It’s gone. God damn you,
it’s gone. Oh damn the dirty swine to hell. You can muck your
way out of it. You’ve got to, you know you’ve got to blow it if
you have to stand there and — cut out that stuff, too. Why don’t
you ask your grandfather?

Oh, muck my grandfather and muck this whole treacherous
muck-faced mucking country and every mucking Spaniard in it
on either side and to hell for ever. Muck them to hell together,
Largo, Prieto, Asensio, Miaja, Rojo, all of them. Muck every one
of them to death to hell. Muck the whole treachery-ridden coun-
try. Muck their egotism and their selfishness and their selfishness
and their egotism and their conceit and their treachery. Muck
them to hell and always. Muck them before we die for them.
Muck them after we die for them. Muck them to death and hell.

349

God muck Pablo. Pablo is all of them. God pity the Spanish
people. Any leader they have will muck them. One good man,
Pablo Iglesias, in two thousand years and everybody else muck-
ing them. How do we know how he would have stood up in this
war? I remember when I thought Largo was O.K. Durruti was
good and his own people shot him there at the Puente de los
Franceses. Shot him because he wanted them to attack. Shot him
in the glorious discipline of indiscipline. The cowardly swine.
Oh muck them all to hell and be damned. And that Pablo that
just mucked off with my exploder and my box of detonators. Oh
muck him to deepest hell. But no. He’s mucked us instead. They
always muck you instead from Cortez, and Menendez de Avila
down to Miaja. Look at what Miaja did to Kleber. The bald
egotistical swine. The stupid egg-headed bastard. Muck all the
insane, egotistical, treacherous swine that have always governed
Spain and ruled her armies. Muck everybody but the people and
then be damned careful what they turn into when they have
power.

His rage began to thin as he exaggerated more and more and
spread his scorn and contempt so widely and unjustly that he
could no longer believe in it himself. If that were true what are
you here for? It’s not true and you know it. Look at all the good
ones. Look at all the fine ones. He could not bear to be unjust. He
hated injustice as he hated cruelty and he lay in his rage that
blinded his mind until gradually the anger died down and the
red, black, blinding, killing anger was all gone and his mind now
as quiet, empty-calm and sharp, cold-seeing as a man is after he
has had sexual intercourse with a woman that he does not love.

‘And you, you poor rabbit,’ he leaned over and said to Maria,
who smiled in her sleep and moved close against him. ‘I would
have struck thee there awhile back if thou had spoken. What an
animal 4 man is in a rage.’

He lay close to the girl now with his arms around her and his
chin on her shoulder and lying there he figured out exactly what
he would have to do and how he would have to do it.

And it isn’t so bad, he thought. It really isn’t so bad at all. I
don’t know whether anyone has ever done it before. But there
will always be people who will do it from now on, given a similar
jam. If we do it and if they hear about it. If they hear about it, yes.
If they do not just wonder how it was we did it. We are too short

350

o£ people but there is no sense to worry about that. I will do the
bridge with what we have. God, I’m glad I got over being angry.
It was like not being able to breathe in a storm. That being angry
is another damned luxury you can’t afford.

‘It’s ail figured out, guapa he said softly against Maria’s
shoulder. ‘You haven’t been bothered by any of it. You have not
known about it. We’ll be killed but we’ll blow the bridge. You
have not had to worry about it. That isn’t much of a wedding
present. But is not a good night’s sleep supposed to be priceless?
You had a good night’s sleep. See if you can wear that like a ring
on your finger. Sleep, guapa. Sleep well, my beloved. I do not
wake thee. That is all I can do for thee now.’

He lay there holding her very lightly, feeling her breathe and
feeling her heart beat, and keeping track of the time on his wrist
watch.

CHAPTER 3 6

Andres had challenged at the government position. That is, he
had lain down where the ground fell sharply away below the
triple belt of wire and shouted up at the rock and earth parapet.
There was no continual defensive line and he could easily have
passed this position in the dark and made his way farther into the
government territory before running into someone who would
challenge him. But it seemed safer and simpler to get it over
here.

‘ jSaludr he had shouted. ‘ jSalud , milicianosP

He heard a bolt snick as it was pulled back. Then, from farther
down the parapet, a rifle fired. There was a crashing crack and a
downward stab of yellow in the dark. Andres had flattened at the
click, the top of his head hard against the ground.

‘Don’t shoot, comrades,’ Andres shouted. ‘Don’t shoot 1 I want
to come in.’

‘How many are you ? ’ someone called from behind the parapet.

‘One. Me. Alone.’

‘Who are you?*

‘Andres Lopez of Villaconejos. From the band of Pablo. With
a message.’

35i

‘Have you your rifle and equipment ?’

‘Yes, man.’

‘We can take in none without rifle and equipment,’ the voice
said. ‘Nor in larger groups than three.’

‘I am alone,’ Andres shouted. ‘It is important. Let me come in.’

He could hear them talking behind the parapet but not what
they were saying. Then the voice shouted again, ‘How many are
you?’

‘One. Me. Alone. For the love of God.’

They were talking behind the parapet again. Then the voice
came, ‘Listen, fascist/

‘I am not a fascist,’ Andres shouted. ‘I am a guerrillero from the
band of Pablo. I come with a message for the General Staff.’

‘He’s crazy,’ he heard someone say. ‘Toss a bomb at him.’

‘Listen,* Andres said. ‘I am alone. I am completely by myself.
I obscenity in the midst of the holy mysteries that I am alone. Let
me come in,’

‘He speaks like a Christian,’ he heard someone say and laugh.

Then someone else said, ‘The best thing is to toss a bomb down
on him.’

‘No,’ Andres shouted. ‘That would be a great mistake. This is
important. Let me come in.’

It was for this reason that he had never enjoyed trips back and
forth between the lines. Sometimes it was better than others. But
it was never good.

‘You are alone?’ the voice called down again.

‘M<? cago en la leche Andres shouted. ‘How many times must
I tell thee? I am alone.’

‘Then if you should be alone stand up and hold thy rifle over
thy head.’

Andres stood up and put the carbine above his head, holding it
in both hands.

‘Now come through the wire. We have thee covered with the
mdquina the voice called.

Andres was in the first zigzag belt of wire. ‘I need my hands
to get through the wire,’ he shouted.

‘Keep them up,’ the voice commanded

‘I am held fast by the wire,’ Andres called.

‘It would have been simpler to have thrown a bomb at him,’ a
voice said.

‘Let him sling his rifle,’ another voice said. ‘He cannot come
through there with his hands above his head. Use a little reason/

‘All these fascists are the same,’ the other voice said. ‘They de-
mand one condition after another.’

‘Listen,’ Andres shouted. ‘I am no fascist but a gnerrillero from
the band of Pablo. We’ve killed more fascists than the typhus/

‘I have never heard of the band of Pablo/ the man who was
evidently in command of the post said. ‘Neither of Peter nor of
Paul nor of any of the other saints nor apostles. Nor of their
bands. Sling thy rifle over thy shoulder and use thy hands to come
through the wire/

‘Before we loose the maquina on thee/ another shouted.

t jQue poco amables soisV Andres said. ‘You’re not very
amiable/

He was working his way through the wire.

* AmablesJ someone shouted at him. ‘We are in a war, man/

‘It begins to appear so/ Andres said.

‘What’s he say?’

Andres heard a bolt click again.

‘Nothing/ he shouted. ‘I say nothing. Do not shoot until I get
through this fornicating wire/

‘Don’t speak badly of our wire/ someone shouted. ‘Or we’ll
toss a bomb on you.’

k Quiero decir, que buena alambrada / Andres shouted. ‘What
beautiful wire. God in a latrine. What lovely wire. Soon I will be
with thee, brothers.’

‘Throw a bomb at him/ he heard the one voice say. ‘I tell you
that’s the soundest way to deal with the whole thing.’

‘Brothers/ Andres said. He was wet through with sweat and
he knew the bomb advocate was perfectly capable of tossing a
grenade at any moment. ‘I have no importance/

‘I believe it/ the bomb man said.

‘You are right,’ Andres said. He was working carefully through
the third belt of wire and he was very close to the parapet. S I have
no importance of any kind. But the affair is serious. Muy, muy
serio .’

‘There is no more serious thing than liberty/ the bomb man
shouted. ‘Thou thinkest there is anything more serious than
liberty?’ he asked challengingly.

‘No, man/ Andres said, relieved. He knew now he was up

* 353

against the crazies; the ones with the black-and-red scarves.
‘/ Viva la Li her tad F

‘ Viva la F.A.L Viva la C.N .T.,* they shouted back at him from
the parapet. ‘ Viva el anarco-sindicalismo and liberty.*

* Viva nosotros ,’ Andres shouted. ‘Long life to us.*

‘He is a co-religionary of ours,’ the bomb man said. ‘And I
might have killed him with this.*

He looked at the grenade in his hand and was deeply moved as
Andres climbed over the parapet. Putting his arms around him,
the grenade still in one hand, so that it rested against Andres’s
shoulder-blade as he embraced him, the bomb man kissed him
on both cheeks.

‘I am content that nothing happened to thee, brother,’ he said.
‘I am very content.’

‘Where is thy officer?* Andres asked.

‘I command here,* a man said. ‘Let me see thy papers.*

He took them into a dugout and looked at them with the light
of a candle. There was the little square of folded silk with the
colours of the Republic and the seal of the S.I.M. in the centre.
There was the Salvoconducto or safe-conduct pass giving his
name, age, height, birth-place, and mission that Robert Jordan
had written out on a sheet from his notebook and sealed with the
S.I.M. rubber stamp, and there were the four folded sheets of the
dispatch to Golz which were tied around with a cord and sealed
with wax and the impression of the metal S.I.M. seal that was set
in the top end of the wooden handle of the rubber stamp.

‘This I have seen,* the man in command of the post said and
handed back the piece of silk. ‘This you all have, I know. But its
possession proves nothing without this.’ He lifted the Salvocon-
ducto and read it through again. ‘Where were you born?’
‘Villaconejos,’ Andres said.

‘And what do they grow there?*

‘Melons,* Andres said. ‘As all the world knows.’

‘Who do you know there?*

‘Why? Are you from there?’

‘Nay. But I have been there. I am from Aranjuez.’

‘Ask me about anyone.’

‘Describe Josd Rincon.*

‘Who keeps the bodega?’

‘Naturally.*

354

‘With a shaved head and a big belly and a cast in one eye/

‘Then this is valid/ the man said and handed him back the
paper. ‘But what do you do on their side?’

‘Our father had installed himself at Villacastin before the
movement/ Andres said. ‘Down there beyond the mountains on
the plain. It was there we were surprised by the movement. Since
the movement I have fought with the band of Pablo. But I am in
a great hurry, man, to take that dispatch/

‘How goes it in the country of the fascists?’ the man command-
ing asked. He was in no hurry.

‘To-day we had much tomatc / Andres said proudly. ‘To-day
there was plenty of dust on the road all day. To-day they wiped
out the band of Sordo/

‘And who is Sordo?’ the other asked deprecatingly.

‘The leader of one of the best bands in the mountains.’

‘All of you should come in to the Republic and join the army/
the officer said. ‘There is too much of this silly guerrilla nonsense
going on. All of you should come in and submit to our Liber-
tarian discipline. Then when we wished to send out guerrillas we
would send them out as they are needed.’

Andres was a man endowed with almost supreme patience. He
had taken the coming in through the wire calmly. None of this
examination had flustered him. He found it perfectly normal that
this man should have no understanding of them nor of what they
were doing and that he should talk idiocy was to be expected.
That it should all go slowly should be expected too; but now he
wished to go.

‘Listen, Compadre / he said. ‘It is very possible that you are
right. But I have orders to deliver that dispatch to the General
commanding the 35th Division, which makes an attack at day-
light in these hills and it is already late at night and I must go.’

‘What attack? What do you know of an attack?’

‘Nay. I know nothing. But I must go now to Navacerrada and
go' on from* there. Wilt thou send me to thy commander who will
give me transport to go on from there? Send one with me now to
respond to him that there be no delay.’

‘I distrust all of this greatly/ he said. ‘It might have been better
to have shot thee as thou approached the wire.’

‘You have seen my papers, Comrade, and I have explained my
mission/ Andres told him patiently.

355

‘Papers can be forged/ the officer said. ‘Any fascist could invent
such a mission. I will go with thee myself to the Commander.’

‘Good/ Andres said. ‘That you should come. But that we
should go quickly/

‘Thou, Sanchez. Thou commandest in my place/ the officer
said. ‘Thou knowest thy duties as well as I do. I take this so-called
Comrade to the Commander/

They started down the shallow trench behind the crest of the
hill and in the dark Andres smelt the foulness the defenders of
the hill crest had made all through the bracken on that slope. He
did not like these people who were like dangerous children; dirty,
foul, undisciplined, kind, loving, silly, and ignorant but always
dangerous because they were armed. He, Andres, was without
politics except that he was for the Republic. He had heard these
people talk many times and he thought what they said was often
beautiful and fine to hear but he did not like them. It is not liberty
not to bury the mess one makes, he thought. No animal has more
liberty than the cat; but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the
best anarchist. Until they learn that from the cat I cannot respect
them.

Ahead of him the officer stopped suddenly.

‘You have your carabine still/ he said.

‘Yes/ Andres said. ‘Why not?’

‘Give it to me/ the officer said. ‘You could shoot me in the back
with it/

‘Why?’ Andres asked him. ‘Why would I shoot thee in the
back?’

‘One never knows/ the officer said. ‘I trust no one. Give me the
carbine/

Andres unslung it and handed it to him.

‘If it pleases thee to carry it/ he said.

‘It is better/ the officer said. ‘We are safer that way/

They went on down the hill in the dark.

35 ^

CHAPTER 37

Now Robert Jordan lay with the girl and he watched time pass-
ing on his wrist. It went slowly, almost imperceptibly, for it was
a small watch and he could not see the second hand. But as he
watched the minute hand he found he could almost check its
motion with his concentration. The girl’s head was under his chin
and when he moved his head to look at the watch he felt the
cropped head against his cheek, and it was as soft but as alive and
silkily rolling as when a marten’s fur rises under the caress of your
hand when you spread the trap jaws open and lift the marten clear
and, holding it, stroke the fur smooth. His throat swelled when
his cheek moved against Maria’s hair and there was a hollow
aching from his throat all through him as he held his arms around
her; his head dropped, his eyes close to the watch where the lance-
pointed, luminous splinter moved slowly up the left face of the
dial. He could see its movement clearly and steadily now and he
held Maria close now to slow it. He did not want to wake her but
he could not leave her alone now in this last time and he put his
lips behind her ear and moved them up along her neck, feeling
the smooth skin and the soft touch of her hair on them. He could
see the hand moving on the watch and he held her tighter and ran
the tip of his tongue along her cheek and on to the lobe of her ear
and along the lovely convolutions to the sweet, firm rim at the
top, and his tongue was trembling. He felt the trembling run
through all of the hollow aching and he saw the hand of the
watch now mounting in sharp angle toward the top where the
hour was. Now while she still slept he turned her head and put
his lips to hers. They lay there, just touching lightly against the
sleep-firm mouth and he swung them softly across it, feeling them
brush lightly. He turned himself toward her and he felt her
shiver along the long, light lovely body and then she sighed,
sleeping, and then she, still sleeping, held him too and then, un-
sleeping, her lips were against his firm and hard and pressing
and he said, ‘But the pain.’

And she said, ‘Nay, there is no pain.’

357

‘Rabbit/

‘Nay, speak not/

‘My rabbit/

‘Speak not. Speak not/

Then they were together so that as the hand on the watch
moved, unseen now, they knew that nothing could ever happen
to the one that did not happen to the other, that no other thing
could happen more than this; that this was all and always; this
was what had been and now and whatever was to come. This,
that they were not to have, they were having. They were having
now and before and always and now and now and now. Oh,
now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is
no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet. Now and for
ever now. Come now, now, for there is no now but now. Yes,
now. Now, please now, only now, not anything else only this
now, and where are you and where am I and where is the other
one, and not why, not ever why, only this now; and on and
always please then always now, always now, for now always one
now; one only one, there is no other one but one now, one, going
now; rising now, sailing now, leaving now, wheeling now, soaring
now, away now, all the way now, all of all the way now; one
and one is one, is one, is one, is one, is still one, is still one, is one
descendingly, is one sofdy, is one longingly, is one kindly, is one
happily, is one in goodness, is one to cherish, is one now on
earth with elbows against the cut and slept-on branches of the
pine tree with the smell of the pine boughs and the night; to
earth conclusively now, and with the morning of the day to
come. Then he said, for the other was only in his head and he
had said nothing. ‘Oh, Maria, I love thee and I thank thee for
this/

Maria said, ‘Do not speak; It is better if we do not speak/

‘I must tell thee for it is a great thing/

‘Nay.*

‘Rabbit — *

But she held him tight and turned her head away and he asked
softly, ‘Is' it pain, rabbit?*

‘Nay,* she said. ‘It is that I am thankful too to have been
another time in la gloria /

Then afterwards they lay quiet, side by side, all length of ankle,
thigh, hip, and shoulder touching, Robert Jordan now with the

358

watch where he could see it again and Maria said, ‘We have had
much good fortune.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we are people of much luck.’

‘There is not time to sleep?*

‘No,’ he said, ‘it starts soon now.’

‘Then if we must rise let us go to get something to eat.’

‘All right.’

‘Thou. Thou art not worried about anything?’

‘No.’

‘Truly?’

‘No. Not now.’

‘But thou hast worried before?’

‘For a while.’

‘Is it aught I can help?’

‘Nay,’ he said. ‘You have helped enough.’

‘That? That was for me.’

‘That was for us both,’ he said. ‘No one is there alone. Come,
rabbit, let us dress.*

But his mind, that was his best companion, was thinking La
Gloria. She said La Gloria. It has nothing to do with glory nor
La Gloire that the French write and speak about. It is the thing
that is in the Cante Hondo and in the Saetas. It is in Greco and
in San Juan de la Cruz, of course, and in the others. I am no
mystic, but to deny it is as ignorant as though you denied the
telephone or that the earth revolves. around the sun or that there
are other planets than this.

How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I
were going to live a long time instead of going to die to-day be-
cause I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I
think, than in all the other time. I’d like to be an old man and to
really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only
a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew
about so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was
more time.

‘You taught me a lot, guapa> he said in English.

‘What did you say?’

‘I have learned much from thee.’

*Que va> she said, ‘it is thou who art educated.’

Educated, he thought. I have the very smallest beginnings of
an education. The very small beginnings. If I die on this day it is

359

a waste because I know a few things now. I wonder if you only
learn them now because you are oversensitized because of the
shortness of the time? There is no such thing as a shortness of
time, though. You should have sense enough to know that too.
I have been all my life in these hills since I have been here.
Anselmo is my oldest friend. I know him better than I know
Charles, than I know Chub, than I know Guy, than I know
Mike, and I know them well. Agustrn, with his vile mouth, is
my brother, and I never had a brother. Maria is my true love and
my wife. I never had a true love. I never had a wife. She is also
my sister, and I never had a sister, and my daughter, and I never
will have a daughter. I hate to leave a thing that is so good. He
finished tying his rope-soled shoes.

T find life very interesting,’ he said to Maria. She was sitting
beside him on the robe, her hands clasped around her ankles.
Someone moved the blanket aside from the entrance to the cave
and they both saw the light. It was night still and there was no
promise of morning except that as he looked up through the pines
he saw how low the stars had swung. The morning would be
coming fast now in this month.

‘Roberto,’ Maria said.

‘Yes, guapa .’

‘In this of to-day we will be together, will we not? ’

‘After the start, yes.’

‘Not at the start.’

‘No. Thou wilt be with the horses.*

‘I cannot be with thee?’

‘No. I have work that only I can do and I would worry about
thee.’

‘Rut you will come fast when it is done? ’

‘Very fast,’ he said and grinned in the dark. ‘Come, guapa , let
us go and eat.’

‘And thy robe?*

‘Roll it up, if it pleases thee.’

‘It pleases me,’ she said.

‘I will help thee.’

‘Nay. Let me do it alone.’

She knelt to spread and roll the robe, then changed her mind
and stood up and shook it so it flapped. Then she knelt down
again to straighten it and roll it. Robert Jordan picked up the two

360

packs, holding them carefully so that nothing would spill from
the slits in them, and walked over through the pines to the cave
mouth where the smoky blanket hung. It was ten minutes to
three by his watch when he pushed the blanket aside with his
elbow and went into the cave.

CHAPTER 38

They were in the cave and the men were standing before the
fire Maria was fanning. Pilar had coffee ready in a pot. She had
not gone back to bed at all since she had roused Robert Jordan
and now she was sitting on a stool in the smoky cave sewing the
rip in one of Jordan’s packs. The other pack was already sewed.
The firelight lit up her face.

‘Take more of the stew,’ she said to Fernando. ‘What does it
matter if thy belly should be full? There is no doctor to operate
if you take a goring.’

‘Don’t speak that way, woman,’ Agustm said. ‘Thou hast the
tongue of the great whore.’

He was leaning on the automatic rifle, its legs folded close
against the fretted barrel, his pockets were full of grenades, a
sack of pans hung from one shoulder, and a full bandolier of
ammunition hung over the other shoulder. He was smoking a
cigarette and he held a bowl of coffee in one hand and blew
smoke on to its surface as he raised it to his lips.

‘Thou art a walking hardware store,’ Pilar said to him. ‘Thou
canst not walk a hundred yards with all that.’

‘ Qui va , woman,’ Agustm said. ‘It is all downhill.’

‘There is the climb to the post,’ Fernando said. ‘Before the
downward slope commences.’

‘I will climb it like a goat,’ Agustm said.

‘And thy brother?’ he asked Eladio. ‘Thy famous brother has
mucked off?’

Eladio was standing against the wall.

‘Shut up,’ he said.

He was nervous and he knew they all knew it. He was always
nervous and irritable before action. He moved from the wall to
the table and began filling his pockets with grenades from one of

36i

the rawhide-covered panniers that leaned, open, against the table
leg.

* Robert Jordan squatted by the pannier beside him. He reached
into the pannier and picked out four grenades. Three were the
oval Mills bomb type, serrated, heavy iron with a spring lever
held down in position by a cotter pin with pulling ring attached.

‘Where did these come from?’ he asked Eladio.

‘Those? Those are from the Republic. The old man brought
them.’

‘How are they?*

'Valen mas que pesan ,’ Eladio said. ‘They are worth a fortune
apiece.’

‘I brought those,’ Anselmo said. ‘Sixty in one jack. Ninety
pounds, Ingles .’

‘Have you used those?’ Robert Jordan asked Pilar.

‘ Que va have we used them?’ the woman said. ‘It was with
those Pablo slew the post at Otero.’

When she mentioned Pablo, Agustin started cursing. Robert
Jordan saw the look on Pilar’s face in the firelight.

‘Leave it,’ she said to Agustin sharply. ‘It does no good to
talk.’

‘Have they always exploded?’ Robert Jordan held the grey-
painted grenade in his hand, trying the bend of the cotter pin
with his thumbnail.

‘Always,’ Eladio said. ‘There was not a dud in any of that lot
we used.’

‘And how quickly?’

‘In the distance one can throw it. Quickly. Quickly enough.’

‘And these?’

He held up a soup-tin-shaped bomb, with a tape wrapping
around a wire loop.

‘They are a garbage,’ Eladio told him. ‘They blow. Yes. But it
is all Hash and no fragments.’

‘But do they always blow?’

‘Que va , always,’ Pilar said. ‘There is no always either with
our munitions or theirs.’

‘But you said the other always blew.’

‘Not me,’ Pilar told him. ‘You asked another, not me. I have
seen no always in any of that stuff.’

‘They all blew,’ Eladio insisted. * Speak the truth, woman.*

‘How do you know they all blew?’ Pilar asked him. ‘It was
Pablo who threw them. You killed no one at Otero.’

‘That son of the great whore/ Agustin began.

‘Leave it alone/ Pilar said sharply. Then she went on, ‘They
are all much the same, Ingles. But the corrugated ones are more
simple.’

I’d better use one of each on each set, Robert Jordan thought.
But the serrated type will lash easier and more securely.

‘Are you going to be throwing bombs, Ingles r’ Agustin asked.

‘Why not?’ Robert Jordan said.

But crouched there, sorting out the grenades, what he was
thinking was : it is impossible. How I could have deceived my-
self about it I do not know. We were as sunk when they attacked
Sordo as Sordo was sunk when the snow stopped. It is that you
can’t accept it. You have to go on and make a plan that you know
is impossible to carry out. You made it and now you know it is
no good. It’s no good, now, in the morning. You can take either
of the posts absolutely O.K. with what you’ve got here. But you
can’t take them both. You can’t be sure of it, I mean. Don’t
deceive yourself. Not when the daylight comes.

Trying to take them both will never work. Pablo knew that ail
the time. I suppose he always intended to muck off but he knew
we were cooked when Sordo was attacked. You can’t base an
operation on the presumption that miracles are going to happen.
You will kill them all off and not even get your bridge blown if
you have nothing better than what you have now. You will kill
off Pilar, Anseimo, Agustin, Primitive, this jumpy Eladio, the
worthless gipsy, and old Fernando, and you won’t get your
bridge blown. Do you suppose there will be a miracle and Golz
will get the message from Andres and stop it? If there isn’t, you
are going to kill them all off with those orders. Maria too. You’ll
kill her too with those orders. Can’t you even get her out of it?
God damn Pablo to hell, he thought.

No. Don’t get angry. Getting angry is as bad as getting scared.
But instead of sleeping with your girl you should have ridden all
night through these hills with the woman to try to dig up enough
people to make it work. Yes, he thought. And if anything hap-
pened to me so I was not here to blow it. Yes. That. That’s why
you weren’t out. And you couldn’t send anybody out because you
couldn’t r un a chance of losing them and being short one more.

363

You had to keep what you had and make a plan to do it with
them.

But your plan stinks. It stinks, I tell you. It was a night plan
and it’s morning now. Night plans aren't any good in the morn-
ing. The way you think at night is no good in the morning. So
now you know it is no good.

What if John Mosby did get away with things as impossible as
this? Sure he did. Much more difficult. And remember, do not
undervalue the element of surprise. Remember that. Remember
it isn’t goofy if you can make it stick. But that is not the way you
are supposed to make it. You should make it not only possible but
sure. But look at how it all has gone. Well, it was wrong in the
first place and such things accentuate disaster as a snowball rolls
up wet snow.

He looked up from where he was squatted by the table and
saw Maria and she smiled at him. He grinned back with the
front of his face and selected four more grenades and put them
in his pockets. I could unscrew the detonators and just use them,
he thought. But I don’t think fragmentation will have any bad
effect. It will come instantaneously with the explosion of the
charge and it won’t disperse it. At least, I don’t think it will. I’m
sure it won’t. Have a little confidence, he told himself. And you,
last night, thinking about how you and your grandfather were
so terrific and your father was a coward. Show yourself a litde
confidence now.

He grinned at Maria again but the grin was still no deeper than
the skin that felt tight over his cheekbones and his mouth.

She thinks you’re wonderful, he thought. I think you stink.
And the gloria and all that nonsense that you had. You had
wonderful ideas, didn’t you? You had this world all taped, didn’t
you? The hell with all of that.

Take it easy, he told himself. Don’t get into a rage. That’s just
a way out too. There are always ways out. You’ve got to bite on
the nail now. There isn’t any need to deny everything there’s
been just because you are going to lose it. Don’t be like some
damned snake with a broken back biting at itself; and your back
isn’t broken either, you hound. Wait until you’re hurt before you
start to cry. Wait until the fight before you get angry. There’s
lots of time for it in a fight. It will be some use to you in a fight.

Pilar came over to him with the bag.

364

‘It is strong now,* she said. ‘Those grenades are very good,
Ingles . You can have confidence in them.’

‘How do you feel, woman?’

She looked at him and shook her head and smiled. He won-
dered how far into her face the smile went. It looked deep
enough.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Dentro de la gravedad *

Then she said, squatting by him, ‘How does it seem to thee
now that it is really starting?*

‘That we are few,’ Robert Jordan said to her quickly.

‘To me, too,’ she said. ‘Very few.’

Then she said still to him alone, ‘The Maria can hold the horses
by herself. I am not needed for that. We will hobble them. They
are cavalry horses and the firing will not panic them. I will go to
the lower post and do that which was the duty of Pablo. In this
way we are one more.*

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I thought you might wish to.’

‘Nay, Ingles Pilar said, looking at him closely. ‘Do not be
worried. All will be well. Remember they expect no such thing
to come to them.’

‘Yes,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘One other thing, Ingles Pilar said as softly as her harsh
whisper could be soft. ‘In that thing of the hand — *

‘What thing of the hand? ’ he said angrily.

‘Nay, listen. Do not be angry, little boy. In regard to that thing
of the hand. That is all gipsy nonsense that I make to give myself
an importance. There is no such thing.’

‘Leave it alone,’ he said coldly.

‘Nay,’ she said harshly and lovingly. ‘It is just a lying nonsense
that I make. I would not have thee worry in the day of batde.*

‘I am not worried,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘Yes, Ingles she said. ‘Thou art very worried, for good cause.
But all will be well, Ingles. It is for this that we are born.’

‘I don’t need a political commissar,’ Robert Jordan told her.

She smiled at him again, smiling fairly and truly with the harsh
lips and the wide mouth, and said, ‘I care for thee very much,

g

‘I don’t want that now,* he said. *Ni tu, ni Dios'

‘Yes,* Pilar said in that husky whisper. ‘I know. I only wished
to tell thee. And do not worry. We will do all very well.*

365

‘Why not?* Robert Jordan said and the very thinnest edge of
the skin in front? of his face smiled. ‘Of course we will. All will
be well*

‘When do we go?’ Pilar asked.

Robert Jordan looked at his watch.

‘Any time/ he said.

He handed one of the packs to Anselmo.

‘How are you doing, old one ?’ he asked.

The old man was finishing whittling the last of a pile of wedges
he had copied from a model Robert Jordan had given him. These
were extra wedges in case they should be needed.

‘Well/ the old man said and nodded. ‘So far, very well/ He
held his hand out. ‘Look/ he said and smiled. His hands were
perfectly steady.

l jBueno , y qui ?’ Robert Jordan said to him. ‘I can always keep
the whole hand steady. Point with one finger/

Anselmo pointed. The finger was trembling. He looked at
Robert Jordan and shook his head.

‘Mine too/ Robert Jordan showed him. ‘Always. That is
normal/

‘Not for me/ Fernando said. He put his right forefinger out to
show them. Then the left forefinger.

‘Canst thou spit?’ Agustin asked him and winked at Robert
Jordan.

Fernando hawked and spat proudly on to the floor of the cave,
then rubbed it in the dirt with his foot.

‘You filthy mule/ Pilar said to him. ‘Spit in the fire if thou must
vaunt thy courage/

‘I would not have spat on the floor, Pilar, if we were not leav-
ing this place/ Fernando said primly.

‘Be careful where you spit to-day/ Pilar told him. ‘It may be
some place you will not be leaving/

‘That one speaks like a black cat/ Agustin said. He had the
nervous necessity to joke that is another form of what they all felt.

‘I joke/ said Pilar.

‘Me too/ said Agustin. ‘But me cago en la leche , but I will be
content when it starts/

‘Where is the gipsy?’ Robert Jordan asked Eladio.

‘With the horses/ Eladio said. ‘You can see him from the cave
mouth.’

‘How is he?’

Eladio grinned. ‘With much fear,’ he said. It reassured him to
speak of the fear of another.

‘Listen, Ingles — ’ Pilar began. Robert Jordan looked toward her
and as he did he saw her mouth open and the unbelieving look
come on her face and he swung toward the cave mouth, reaching
for his pistol. There, holding the blanket aside with one hand,
the short automatic rifle muzzle with its flash-cone jutting up
above his shoulder, was Pablo standing short, wide, bristly-faced,
his small red-rimmed eyes looking toward no-one in particular.

‘Thou — ’ Pilar said to him unbelieving. ‘Thou.’

‘Me,’ said Pablo evenly. He came into the cave.

'Hola, Ingles ,’ he said. ‘I have five from the bands of Elias and
Alejandro above with their horses.’

‘And the exploder and the detonators?’ Robert Jordan said.
‘And the other material?’

‘I threw them down the gorge into the river,’ Pablo said, still
looking at no one. ‘But I have thought of a way to detonate using
a grenade.’

‘So have I,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘Have you a drink of anything?’ Pablo asked vrearily.

Robert Jordan handed him the flask and he swallowed fast,
then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

‘What passes with you?’ Pilar asked.

‘Nada,’ Pablo said, wiping his mouth again. ‘Nothing. I have
come back.’

‘But what?’

‘Nothing. I had a moment of weakness. I went away but I am
come back.’

He turned to Robert Jordan. *En el jondo no soy cobarde / he
said. ‘At bottom I am not a coward.’

But, you are very many other things, Robert Jordan thought
Damned if you’re not. But I’m glad to see you, you son of a
bitch.

‘Five was all I could get from Elias and Alejandro,’ Pablo said.
‘I have ridden since I left here. Nine of you could never have
done it Never. I knew that last night when the Ingles explained
it. Never. There are seven men and a corporal at the lower post.
Suppose there is &n alarm or that they fight?’

He looked at Robert Jordan now. ‘When I left I thought you

367

would know that it was impossible and would give it up. Then
after I had thrown away thy material I saw it in another manner.’

‘I am glad to see thee,’ Robert Jordan said. He walked over to
him. ‘We are all right with the grenades. That will work. The
other does not matter now.*

‘Nay/ Pablo said. ‘I do nothing for thee. Thou art a thing of
bad omen. All of this comes from thee. Sordo also. But after I
had thrown away thy material I found myself too lonely.’

‘Thy mother Pilar said.

‘So I rode for the others to make it possible for it to be success-
ful. I have brought the best that I could get. I have left them at
the top so I could speak to you, first. They think I am the leader.’

‘Thou art/ Pilar said. ‘If thee wishes.’ Pablo looked at her and
said nothing. Then he said simply and quietly, ‘I have thought
much since the thing of Sordo. I believe if we must finish we must
finish together. But thou, Ingles . I hate thee for bringing this to
us.’

‘But Pablo Fernando, his pockets full of grenades, a bandolier
of cartridges over his shoulder, he still wiping in his pan of stew
with a piece of bread, began. ‘Do you not believe the operation
can be successful? Night before last you said you were convinced
it would be.’

‘Give him some more stew/ Pilar said viciously to Maria. Then
to Pablo, her eyes softening, ‘So you have come back, eh?’

‘Yes, woman/ Pablo said.

‘Well, thou art welcome/ Pilar said to him. ‘I did not think
thou couldst be the ruin thou appeared to be/

‘Having done such a thing there is a loneliness that cannot be
borne/ Pablo said to her quickly.

‘That cannot be borne/ she mocked him. ‘That cannot be borne
by thee for fifteen minutes/

‘Do not mock me, woman, I have come back/

‘And thou art welcome,’ she said. ‘Didst not hear me the first
time? Drink thy coffee and let us go. So much theatre tires me/

‘Is that coffee? ’ Pablo asked.

‘Certainly/ Fernando said.

‘Give me some, Maria,* Pablo said. ‘How art thou?’ He did not
look at her.

‘Well/ Maria told him and brought him a bowl of coffee. ‘Do
you want stew? ’ Pablo shook his head.

368

Wo me gusto, estar solo / Pablo went on, explaining to Pilar as
though the others were not there. ‘I do not like to be alone.
Sabes? Yesterday all day alone working for the good of all I was
not lonely. But last night. ;Hombre ! ; Oue mol lo pose!'

‘Thy predecessor the famous Judas Iscariot hanged himself/
Pilar said.

‘Don’t talk to me that way, woman,’ Pablo said. ‘Have you not
seen? I am back. Don’t talk of Judas nor nothing of that. I am
back.’

‘How are these people thee brought?’ Pilar asked him. ‘Hast
brought anything worth bringing?’

‘Sow buenosj Pablo said. He took a chance and looked at Pilar
squarely, then looked away.

* Buenos y bobos. Good ones and stupids. Ready to die and all.
A tu gusto . According to thy taste. The way you like them/

Pablo looked Pilar in the eyes again and this time he did not
look away. He kept on looking at her squarely with his small,
red-rimmed pig eyes.

‘Thou/ she said and her husky voice was fond again. ‘Thou. I
suppose if a man has something once, always something of it
remains.’

*. Listo / Pablo said, looking at her squarely and flatly now. ‘I
am ready for what the day brings/

‘I believe thou art back/ Pilar said to him. ‘I believe it. But,
hombre , thou wert a long way gone.’

‘Lend me another swallow from thy bottle/ Pablo said to
Robert Jordan. ‘And then let us be going.’

CHAPTER 39

In the dark they came up the hill through the timber to the
narrow pass at the top. They were all loaded heavily and they
climbed slowly. The horses had loads too, packed over the
saddles.

‘We can cut them loose if it is necessary/ Pilar had said. ‘But
with that, if we can keep it, we can make another camp/

‘And the rest of the ammunition?* Robert Jordan had asked as
they lashed the packs.

3 6g

‘In those saddle bags/

Robert Jordan felt the weight of his heavy pack, the dragging
on his neck from the pull of his jacket with its pockets full of
grenades, the weight of his pistol against his thigh, and the
bulging of his trouser pockets where the clips for the sub-machine
gun were. In his mouth was the taste of the coffee, in his right
hand he carried the sub-machine gun and with his left hand he
reached and pulled up the collar of his jacket to ease the pull of
the pack straps.

‘ Ingles / Pablo said to him, walking close beside him in the
dark.

‘What, man?’

‘These I have brought think this is to be successful because I
have brought them,’ Pablo said. ‘Do not say anything to dis-
illusion them.’

‘Good,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘But let us make it successful.’

‘They have five horses, sabesl ’ Pablo said cautiously.

‘Good,’ said Robert Jordan. ‘We will keep all the horses to-
gether/

‘Good,’ said Pablo, and nothing more.

I didn’t think you had experienced any complete conversion on
the road to Tarsus, old Pablo, Robert Jordan thought. No. Your
coming back was miracle enough. I don’t think there will ever
be any problem about canonizing you.

‘With those five I will deal with the lower post as well as Sordo
would have/ Pablo said. ‘I will cut the wire and fall back upon
the bridge as we agreed.’

We went over this all ten minutes ago, Robert Jordan thought.
I wonder why this now —

‘There is a possibility of making it to Gredos/ Pablo said.
‘Truly, I have thought much of it/

I believe you’ve had another flash in the last few minutes,
Robert Jordan said to himself. You have had another revelation.
But you’re not going to convince me that I am invited. No, Pablo.
Do not ask me to believe too much.

Ever since Pablo had come into the cave and said he had five
men Robert Jordan felt increasingly better. Seeing Pablo again
had broken the pattern of tragedy into which the whole opera-
tion had seemed grooved ever since the snow, and since Pablo
had been back he felt not that his luck had turned, since he did
370

not believe in luck, but that the whole thing had turned for the
better and that now it was possible. Instead of the surety of failure
he felt confidence rising in him as a tyre begins to fill with air
from a slow pump. There was little difference at first, although
there was a definite beginning, as when the pump starts and the
rubber of the tube crawls a little, but it came now as steadily as a
tide rising or the sap rising in a tree until he began to feel the first
edge of that negation of apprehension that often turned into
actual happiness before action.

This was the greatest gift that he had, the talent that fitted him
for war; that ability not to ignore but to despise whatever bad
ending there could be. This quality was destroyed by too much
responsibility for others or the necessity of undertaking some-
thing ill planned or badly conceived. For in such things the bad
ending, failure, could not be ignored. It was not simply a possi-
bility of harm to one’s self, which could be ignored. He knew he
himself was nothing, and he knew death was nothing. He knew
that truly, as truly as he knew anything. In the last few days he
had learned that he himself, with another person, could be every-
thing. But inside himself he knew that this was the exception.
That we have had, he thought. In that I have been most for-
tunate. That was given to me, perhaps, because I never asked for
it. That cannot be taken away nor lost. But that is over and done
with now on this morning and what there is to do now is our
work.

And you, he said to himself, I am glad to see you getting a little
something back that was badly missing for a time. But you were
pretty bad back there. I was ashamed enough of you, there for a
while. Only I was you. There wasn’t any me to judge you. We
were all in bad shape. You and me and both of us. Come on now.
Quit thinking like a schizophrenic. One at a time, now. You’re all
right again now. But listen, you must not think of the girl all
day ever. You can do nothing now to protect her except to keep
her out of it, and that you are doing. There are evidently going
to be plenty of horses if you can believe the signs. The best thing
you can do for her is to do the job well and fast and get out, and
thinking of her will only handicap you in this. So do not think
of her ever.

Having thought this out he waited until Maria came up walk-
ing with Pilar and Rafael and the horses.

37i

‘Hi, guapa ,’ he said to her in the dark, ‘how are you?*

‘I am well, Roberto,* she said.

‘Don’t worry about anything,* he said to her and shifting the
gun to his left hand he put a hand on her shoulder.

‘I do not,’ she said.

‘It is all very well organized,’ he told her. ‘Rafael will be with
thee with the horses.’

‘I would rather be with thee.*

‘Nay. The horses is where thpu art most useful.’

‘Good/ she said. ‘There I will be.’

Just then one of the horses whinnied and from the open place
below the opening through the rocks a horse answered, the neigh
rising into a shrill sharply broken quaver.

Robert Jordan saw the bulk of the new horses ahead in the
dark. He pressed forward and came up to them with Pablo. The
men were standing by their mounts.

c Salud i * Robert Jordan said.

*Salud, 1 they answered in the dark. He could not see their
faces.

‘This is the Ingles who comes with us,’ Pablo said. ‘The dyna-
miter.’

No one said anything to that. Perhaps they nodded in the dark.

‘Let us get going, Pablo,’ one man said. ‘Soon we will have
the daylight on us.’

‘Did you bring any more grenades?’ another asked.

‘Plenty,’ said Pablo. ‘Supply yourselves when we leave the
animals.*

‘Then let us go,* another said. ‘We’ve been waiting here half
the night.*

‘Ho/#, Pilar,’ another said as the woman came up.

‘QuS me maten , if it is not Pepe,’ Pilar said huskily. ‘How are
you, shepherd?’

‘Good,’ said the man. ‘Dentro dela grave dad I

‘What are you riding?’ Pilar asked him.

‘The grey of Pablo,’ the man said. ‘It is much horse.’

‘Come on,’ another man said. ‘Let us go. There is no good in
gossiping here,’

‘How art thou, Elicio?’ Pilar said to him as he mounted.

‘How would I be?’ he said rudely. ‘Come on, woman, we have
work to do.’

Pablo mounted the big bay horse.

‘Keep thy mouths shut and follow me,’ he said. ‘I will lead you
to the place where we will leave the horses.*

CHAPTER 40

During the time that Robert Jordan had slept through, the time
he had spent planning the destruction of the bridge, and the time
that he had been with Maria, Andres had made slow progress.
Until he had reached the Republican lines he had travelled across
country and through the fascist lines as fast as a countryman in
good physical condition who knew the country well could travel
in the dark. But once inside the Republican lines it went very
slowly.

In theory he should only have had to show the safe-conduct
given him by Robert Jordan stamped with the seal of the S.I.M.
and the dispatch which bore the same seal and be passed along
toward his destination with the greatest speed. But first he had
encountered the company commander in the front line who had
regarded the whole mission with owlishly grave suspicion.

He had followed this company commander to battalion head-
quarters where the battalion commander, who had been a barber
before the movement, was filled with enthusiasm on hearing the
account of his mission. This commander, who was named Gomez,
cursed the company commander for his stupidity, patted Andres
on the back, gave him a drink of bad brandy, and told him that
he himself, the ex-barber, had always wanted to be a guerrillero .
He had then roused his adjutant, turned over the battalion to
him, and sent his orderly to wake up and bring his motor-cyclist.
Instead of sending Andres back to brigade headquarters with the
motor-cyclist, Gomez had decided to take him there himself in
order to expedite things and, with Andres holding tight on to the
seat ahead of him, they roared, bumping, down the shell-pocked
mountain road between the double row of big trees, the head-
light of the motor-cycle showing their whitewashed bases and
the places on the trunks where the whitewash and the bark had
been chipped and torn by shell fragments and bullets during the
fighting iong this road in the first summer of the movement.

373

They turned into the little smashed-roofed mountain-resort town
where brigade headquarters was and Gomez had braked the
motor-cycle like a dirt-track racer and leaned it against the wall
of the house where a sleepy sentry came to attention as Gomez
pushed by him into the big room where the walls were covered
with maps and a very sleepy officer with a green eyeshade sat at
a desk with a reading lamp, two telephones, and a copy of Mundo
Obrero.

This officer looked up at Gomez and said, ‘What does ffiou
here? Htfve you never heard of the telephone?’

*1 must see the Lieutenant-Colonel,’ Gomez said.

‘He is asleep,’ the officer said. ‘I could see the lights of that
bicycle of thine for a mile coming down the road. Dost wish to
bring on a shelling?’

‘Call the Lieutenant-Colonel,’ Gomez said. ‘This is a matter of
the utmost gravity.’

‘He is asleep, I tell thee,’ the officer said. ‘What sort of a bandit
is that with thee?’ he nodded toward Andres.

‘He is a guerrillero from the other side of the lines with a dis-
patch of the utmost importance for the General Golz who com-
mands the attack that is to be made at dawn beyond Navacerrada’,
Gomez said excitedly and earnestly. ‘Rouse the T eniente-Coronel
for the love of God.’

The officer looked at him with his droopy eyes shaded by the
green celluloid.

‘All of you are crazy,’ he said. C I know of no General Golz nor
of no attack. Take this sportsman and get back to your battalion. 5

‘Rouse the T eniente-Coronel, I say, 5 Gomez said and Andres
saw his mouth tightening.

‘Go obscenity yourself,’ the officer said to him lazily and turned
away.

Gomez took his heavy 9 mm. Star pistol out of its holster and
shoved it against the officer’s shoulder.

‘Rouse him, you fascist bastard,’ he said. ‘Rouse him or I’ll kill
you.’

‘Calm yourself,’ the officer said. ‘All you barbers are emotional.’

Andres saw Gomez’s face draw with hate in the light of the
reading lamp. But all he said was, ‘Rouse him.’

‘Orderly, 5 the officer called in a contemptuous voice.

A soldier came to the door and saluted and went out.*

374

‘His fiancee is with him/ the officer said and went bade to read-
ing the paper. ‘It is certain he will be delighted to see you.*

‘It is those like thee who obstruct all effort to win this war,’
Gomez said to the staff officer.

The officer paid no attention to him. Then, as he read on, he
remarked, as though to himself, ‘What a curious periodical this
is/

‘Why don’t you read El Debate then? That is your paper/
Gomez said to him, naming the leading Catholic-Conservative
organ published in Madrid before the movement.

‘Don’t forget I am thy superior officer and that a report by me
on thee carries weight/ the officer said without looking up. T
never read El Debate . Do not make false accusations.’

‘No. You read A.B.C./ Gomez said. ‘The army is still rotten
with such as thee. With professionals such as thee. But it will not
always be. We are caught between the ignorant and the cynical.
But we will educate the one and eliminate the other/

* “Purge ” is the word you want/ the officer said, still not look-
ing up. ‘Here it reports the purging of more of thy famous Rus-
sians. They are purging more than the epsom salts in this epoch.’

‘By any name/ Gomez said passionately. ‘By any name so that
such as thee are liquidated.’

‘Liquidated/ the officer said insolently as though speaking to
himself. ‘Another new word that has little of Castilian in it/

‘Shot, then/ Gomez said. ‘That is Castilian. Canst understand
it? ’ *

‘Yes, man, but do not talk so loudly. There are others beside
the Teniente-Coronel asleep in this Brigade Staff and thy emotion
bores me. It was for that reason that I always shaved myself. I
never liked the conversation.*

Gomez looked at Andres and shook his head. His eyes were
shining with the moistness that rage and hatred can bring. But
he shook his head and said nothing as he stored it all away for
some time in the future. He had stored much in the year and a
half in which he had risen to the command of a battalion in the
Sierra and' now, as the Lieutenant-Colonel came into the room
in his pyjamas he drew himself stiff and saluted.

The Lieutenant-Colonel Miranda, who was a short, grey-faced
man, who had been in the army all his life, who had lost the love
of his wife in Madrid while he was losing his digestion in

375

Morocco', and become a Republican when he found he could not
divorce his wife (there was never any question of recovering his
digestion), had entered the civil war as a Lieutenant-Colonel. He
had only one ambition, to finish the war with the same rank. He
had defended the Sierra well and he wanted to be left alone there
to defend it whenever it was attacked. He felt much healthier in
the war, probably due to the forced curtailment of the number of
meat courses, he had an enormous stock of sodium-bicarbonate,
he had his whisky in the evening, his twenty-three-year-old mis-
tress was having a baby, as were nearly all the other girls who
had started out as milicianas in the July of the year before, and
now he came into the room, nodded in answer to Gomez’s salute
and put out his hand.

‘What brings thee, Gomez?’ he asked and then, to the officer
at the desk who was his chief of operation, ‘Give me a cigarette,
please, Pepe.’

Gomez showed him Andres’s papers and the dispatch. The
Lieutenant-Colonel looked at the Salvoconducto quickly, looked
at Andres, nodded and smiled, and then looked at the dispatch
hungrily. He felt of the seal, tested it with his forefinger, then
handed both the safe-conduct and dispatch back to Andres.

‘Is the life very hard there in the hills? ’ he asked.

‘No, my Lieutenant-Colonel,’ Andres said.

‘Did they tell thee where would be the closest point to find
General Golz’s headquarters ? ’

‘Navacerrada, my Lieutenant-Colonel,’ Andres said. ‘The
Ingles said it would be somewhere close to Navacerrada behind
the lines to the right of there.’

‘What IngtesV the Lieutenant-Colonel asked quietly.

‘The Ingles who is with us as a dynamiter.’

The Lieutenant-Colonel nodded. It was just another sudden
unexplained rarity of this war. ‘The Ingles who is with us as a
dynamiter.’

‘You had better take him, Gomez, on the motor,’ the Lieu-
tenant-Colonel said. ‘Write them a very strong Salvoconducto to
the Estado Mayor of General Golz for me to sign,’ he said to the
officer in the green celluloid eyeshade. ‘Write it on the machine,
Pepe. Here are the details,’ he motioned for Andres to hand over
his safe-conduct, ‘and put on two seals.’ He turned to Gomez.
‘You will need something strong to-night. It is rightly so. People

37 6

should be careful when an offensive is projected, I will give you
something as strong as I can make it/ Then to Andres, very
kindly, he said, ‘Dost wish anything? To eat or to drink?’

‘No, my Lieutenant-Colonel/ Andres said. ‘I am not hungry.
They gave me cognac at the last place of command and more
would make me seasick.’

‘Did you see any movement or activity opposite my front as
you came through?’ the Lieutenant-Colonel asked Andres
politely.

‘It was as usual, my Lieutenant-Colonel. Quiet. Quiet.’

‘Did I not meet thee in Cercedilla about three months back?’
the Lieutenant-Colonel asked.

‘Yes, my Lieutenant-Colonel.*

‘I thought so,’ the Lieutenant-Colonel patted him on the shoul-
der. ‘You were with the old man Anselmo. How is he?’

‘He is well my Lieutenant-Colonel,’ Andres told him.

‘Good. It makes me happy,’ the Lieutenant-Colonel said. The
officer showed him what he had typed and he read it over and
signed it. ‘You must go now quickly,’ he said to Gomez and
Andres. ‘Be careful with the motor,’ he said to Gomez. ‘Use your
lights. Nothing will happen from a single motor and you must
be careful. My compliments to Comrade General Golz. We met
after Peguerinos.’ He shook hands with them both. ‘Button the
papers inside thy shirt,’ he said. ‘There is much wind on a motor.’

After they went out he went to a cabinet, took out a glass and a
bottle, and poured himself some whisky and poured plain water
into it from an earthenware crock that stood on the floor against
the wall. Then holding the glass and sipping the whisky very
slowly he stood in front of the big map on the wall and studied
the offensive possibilities in the country above Navacerrada.

‘I am glad it is Golz and not me,’ he said finally to the officer
who sat at the table. The officer did not answer and looking away
from the map and at the officer the Lieutenant-Colonel saw he
was asleep with his head on his arms. The Lieutenant-Colonel
went over to the desk and pushed the two phones close together
so that one touched the officer’s head on either side. Then he
walked to the cupboard, poured himself another whisky, put
water in it, and went back to the map again.

Andres, holding tight on to the seat where Gomez was forking
the motor, bent his head against the wind as the motor-cycle

377

moved, noisily exploding, into the light-split darkness of the
country road that opened ahead sharp with the high black of the
poplars beside it, dimmed and yellow-soft now as the road dipped
into the fog along a stream bed, sharpening hard again as the road
rose and, ahead of them at the crossroads, the headlight showed
the grey bulk of the empty trucks coming down from the moun-

CHAPTER 41

'Pablo stopped and dismounted in the dark. Robert Jordan heard
the creaking and the heavy breathing as they all dismounted and
the clinking of a bridle as a horse tossed his head. He smelled the
horses and the unwashed and sour slept-in clothing smell of the
new men and the wood-smoky sleep-stale smell of the others who
had been in the cave. Pablo was standing close to him and he
smelled the braSsy, dead-wine smell that came from him like the
taste of a copper coin in your mouth. He lit a cigarette, cupping
his hand to hide the light, pulled deep on it, and heard Pablo say
very softly, ‘Get the grenade sack, Pilar, while we hobble these.’

‘Agustm,’ Robert Jordan said in a whisper, ‘you and Anselmo
come now with me to the bridge. Have you the sack of pans for
the maquinaV

‘Yes,* Agustin said. ‘Why not?*

Robert Jordan went over to where Pilar was unpacking one of
the horses with the help of Primitivo.

‘Listen, woman,’ he said softly.

‘What now?* she whispered huskily, swinging a cinch hook
clear from under the horse’s belly.

‘Thou understandest that there is to be no attack on the post
until thou hearest the falling of the bombs?’

‘How many times dost thou have to tell me?’ Pilar said. ‘You
are getting like an old woman, IngUs

‘Only to check,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘And after the destruction
of the post you fall back on to the bridge and cover the road from
above and my left flank.’

‘The first time thou outlined it I understood it as well as I will
ever understand it,’ Pilar whispered to him. ‘Get thee about thy
business,’

378

‘That no one should make a move nor fire a shot nor throw a
bomb until the noise of the bombardment comes/ Robert Jordan
said softly.

‘Do not molest me more/ Pilar whispered angrily. ‘I have
understood this since we were at Sordo’s/

Robert Jordan went to where Pablo was tying the horses. ‘I
have only hobbled those which are liable to panic/ Pablo said.
‘These are tied so a pull of the rope will release them, seer’

‘Good.’

‘I will tell the girl and the gipsy how to handle them/ Pablo
said. His new men were standing in a group by themselves lean-
ing on their carbines.

‘Dost understand all?’ Robert Jordan asked.

‘Why not?’ Pablo said. ‘Destroy the post. Cut the wire. Fall
back on the bridge. Cover the bridge until thou bio west.’

‘And nothing to start until the commencement of the bom-
bardment.’

‘Thus it is.’

‘Well then, much luck,’

Pablo grunted. Then he said, ‘Thou wilt cover us well with the
mdquina and with thy small m&quina when we come back, eh,
Ingles ?’

* De la primera / Robert Jordan said. ‘Off the top of the basket.’

‘Then/ Pablo said. ‘Nothing more. But in that moment thou
must be very careful, Inglis. It will not be simple to do that unless
thou art very careful.’

‘I will handle the mdquina myself/ Robert Jordan said to
him.

‘Hast thou much experience? For I am of no mind to be shot
by Agustfn with his belly full of good intentions .’

‘I have much experience. Truly. And if Agustm uses either
mdquina I will see that he keeps it way above thee. Above, above
and above.’

‘Then nothing more/ Pablo said. Then he said softly and con-
fidentially, ‘There is still a lack of horses.*

The son of a bitch, Robert Jordan thought. Or does he think I
did not understand him the first time.

‘I go on foot/ he said. ‘The horses are thy affair.’

‘Nay, there will be a horse for thee, Ingles / Pablo said softly.
‘There will be horses for all of us/

379

‘That is thy problem,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Thou does not
have to count me. Hast enough rounds for thy new maquinaV

‘Yes,’ Pablo said. ‘All that the cavalryman carried. I have fired
only four to try it. I tried it yesterday in the high hills.’

‘We go now,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘We must be there early and
well hidden/

, ‘We all go now/ Pablo said. ‘ Suerte , Ingles /

I wonder what the bastard is planning now, Robert Jordan
said. But I am pretty sure I know. Well, that is his, not mine.
Thank God I do not know these new men.

He put his hand out and said, ‘ Suerte , PabloJ and their two
hands gripped in the dark.

Robert Jordan, when he put his hand out, expected that it
would be like grasping something reptilian or touching a leper.
He did not know what Pablo’s hand would feel like. But in the
dark Pablo’s hand gripped his hard and pressed it frankly and
he returned the grip. Pablo had a good hand in the dark and
feeling it gave Robert Jordan the strangest feeling he had felt that
morning. We must be allies now, he thought. There was always
much handshaking with allies. Not to mention decorations and
kissing on both cheeks, he thought. I’m glad we do not have to
do that. I suppose all allies are like this. They always hate each
other au fond. But this Pablo is a strange man.

‘ Suerte , Pablo,’ he said and gripped the strange, firm, purpose-
ful hand hard. ‘I will cover thee well. Do not worry.’

‘I am sorry for having taken thy material,’ Pablo said. ‘It was
an equivocation.’

‘But thou hast brought what we needed.’

‘I do not hold this of the bridge against thee, IngUs Pablo
said. ‘I see a successful termination for it.*

‘What are you two doing? Becoming maricones ?’ Pilar said
suddenly beside them in the dark. ‘That is all thou hast lacked,’
"she said to Pablo. ‘Get along, Ingles , and cut thy good-byes short
before this one steals the rest of thy explosive.’

‘Thou dost not understand me, woman,’ Pablo said. ‘The
IngUs and I understand one another/

‘Nobody understands thee. Neither God nor thy mother,’ Pilar
said. ‘Nor I either. Get along, IngUs, Make thy good-byes with
thy cropped head and go. Me cago en tu padre , but I begin to
think thou art afraid to see the bull come out.*

380

‘Thy mother/ Robert Jordan said,

‘Thou never hadst one/ Pilar whispered cheerfully. ‘Now go,
because I have a great desire to start this and get it over with. Go
with thy people/ she said to Pablo. ‘Who knows how long their
stern resolution is good for? Thou hast a couple that I would not
trade thee for. Take them and go/

Robert Jordan slung his pack on his back and walked over to
the horses to find Maria.

‘Good-bye, guapa / he said. ‘I will see thee soon/

He had an unreal feeling about all of this now as though he
had said it all before or as though it were a train that were going,
especially as though it were a train and he was standing on the
platforrn of a railway station.

‘Good-bye, Roberto/ she said. ‘Take much care/

‘Of course/ he said. He bent his head to kiss her and his pack
rolled forward against the back of his head so that his forehead
bumped hers hard. As this happened he knew this had happened
before too.

‘Don’t cry/ he said, awkward not only from the load.

‘I do not/ she said. ‘But come back quickly/

‘Do not worry when you hear the firing. There is bound to be
much firing/

‘Nay. Only come back quickly/

‘Good-bye, guapa / he said awkwardly.

* Salud , Roberto/

Robert Jordan had not felt this young since he had taken the
train at Red Lodge to go down to Billings to get the train there
to go away to school for the first time. He had been afraid to go
and he did not want anyone to know it and, at the station, just
before the conductor picked up the box he would step up on to
reach the steps of the day coach, his father had kissed him
good-bye and said, ‘May the Lord watch between thee and me
while we are absent the one from the other/ His father had been
a very religious man and he had sa-id it simply and sincerely. But
his moustache had been moist and his eyes were damp with
emotion and Robert Jordan had been so embarrassed by all of it,
the damp religious sound of the prayer, and by his father kissing
him good-bye, that he had felt suddenly so much older than his
father and sorry for him that he could hardly bear it.

After the train started he had stood on the rear platform and

38i

watched the station and the water tower grow smaller and smaller
and the rails crossed by the ties narrowed toward a point where
the station and the water tower stood now minute and tiny in the
steady clicking that was taking him away.

The brakeman said, ‘Dad seemed to take your going sort o£
hard, Bob/

‘Yes/ he had said, watching the sagebrush that ran from the
edge of the road bed between the passing telegraph poles across
to the streaming-by dusty stretching of the road. He was looking
for sage hens.

‘You don’t mind going away to school ?’

‘No/ he had said and it was true.

It would not have been true before but it was true that minute
and It was only now, at this parting, that he ever felt as young
again as he had felt before that train left. He felt very young now
and very awkward and he was saying good-bye as awkwardly as
one can be when saying good-bye to a young girl when you are a
boy in school, saying good-bye at the front porch, not knowing
whether to kiss the girl or not. Then he knew it was not the good-
bye he was being awkward about. It was the meeting he was
going to. The good-bye was only a part of the awkwardness he
felt abput the meeting.

You’re getting them again, he told himself. But I suppose there
is no one that does not feel that he is too young to do it. He would
not put a name to it. Come on, he said to himself. Come on. It is
too early for your second childhood.

‘Good-bye, guapa / he said. ‘Good-bye, rabbit/

‘Good-bye, my Roberto,’ she said and he went over to where
Anselmo and Agustm were standing and said, ‘Vamonos.'

Anselmo swung his heavy pack up. Agustm, fully loaded since
the cave, was leaning against a tree, the automatic rifle jutting
over the top of his load.

‘Good/ he said. ‘ Vamonos /

The three of them started down the hill.

* Buena suerte , Don Roberto,’ Fernando said as the three of
them passed him as they moved in single file between the trees.
Fernando was crouched on his haunches a little way from where
they passed but he spoke with great dignity.

‘j Buena suerte thyself, Fernando/ Robert Jordan said.

‘In everything thou doest/ Agustm said.

382

‘Thank you, Don Roberto,’ Fernando said, undisturbed by
Agustfn.

‘That one is a phenomenon, Ingles , 7 Agustfn whispered.

‘I believe thee,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Can I help thee? Thou art
loaded like a horse.’

‘I am all right,’ Agustfn said. ‘Man, but I am content we are
started.’

‘Speak softly,’ Anselmo said. ‘From now on speak little and
softly.’

Walking carefully, downhill, Anselmo in the lead, Agustfn
next, Robert Jordan placing his feet carefully so that he would
not slip, feeling the dead pine needles under his rope-soled shoes,
bumping a tree root with one foot and putting a hand forward
and feeling the cold metal jut of the automatic rifle barrel and
the folded legs of the tripod, then working sideways down the
hill, his shoes sliding and grooving the forest floor, putting his
left hand out again and touching the rough bark of a tree trunk,
then as he braced himself, his hand feeling a smooth place, the
base of the palm of his hand coming away sticky from the resinous
sap where a blaze had been cut, they dropped down the steep
wooded hillside to the point above the bridge where Robert
Jordan and Anselmo had watched the first day.

Now Anselmo was halted by a pine tree in the dark and be took
Robert Jordan’s wrist and whispered, so low Jordan could hardly
hear him. ‘Look. There is the fire in his brazier.’

It was a point of light below where Robert Jordan knew the
bridge joined the road.

‘Here is where we watched,’ Anselmo said. He took Robert
Jordan’s hand and bent it down to touch a small fresh blaze low
on a tree trunk. ‘This I marked while thou watched. To the right
is where thou wished to put the maquina 7

‘We will place it there.’

‘Good.’

They put the packs down behind the base of the pine trunks
and the two of them followed Anselmo over to the level place
where there was a clump of seedling pines.

‘It is here,’ Anselmo said. ‘Just here.’

‘From here, with daylight,’ Robert Jordan crouched behind
the small trees whispered to Agustfn, ‘thou wilt see a small stretch
of road and the entrance to the bridge. Thou wilt see the length

of the bridge and a small stretch of road at the other end before it
rounds the curve of the rocks.’

Agustin said nothing.

‘Here thou wilt lie while we prepare the exploding and fire on
anything that comes from above or below.*

‘Where is that light?’ Agustin asked.

‘In the sentry box at this end,’ Robert Jordan whispered.

‘Who deals with the sentries?’

‘The old man and I, as I told thee. But if we do not deal with
them, thou must fire into the sentry boxes and at them if thou
seest them.’

‘Yes. You told me that.*

‘After thd explosion when the people of Pablo come around that
corner, thou must fire over their heads if others come after them.
Thou must fire high above them when they appear in any event
that others must not come. Understandest thou?’

‘Why not? It is as thou saidest last night.’

‘Hast any questions?’

‘Nay. I have two sacks. I can load them from above where it
will not be seen and bring them here.’

‘But do no digging here. Thou must be as well hid as we were
at the top.’

‘Nay. I will bring the dirt in them in the dark. You will see.
They will not show as I will fix them.’

‘Thou art very close. gSabes? In the daylight this clump shows
clearly from below.’

‘Do not worry, Ingles. Where goest thou ? ’

‘I go close below with the small mdquina of mine. The old man
will cross the gorge now to be ready for the box of the other end.
It faces in that direction.’

‘Then nothing more,’ said Agustin. ‘ Salud , Ingles . Hast thou
tobacco?’

‘Thou canst not smoke. It is too close.*

‘Nay. Just to hold in the mouth. To smoke later.’

Robert Jordan gave him his cigarette case and Agustin took
three cigarettes and put them inside the front flap of his herds-
man’s flat cap. He spread the legs of his tripod with the gun
muzzle in the low pines and commenced unpacking his load by
touch and laying the things where he wanted them.

‘Nad a mas' he said. ‘Well, nothing more.’

384

Anselmo and Robert Jordan left him there and went back to
where the packs were.

‘Where had we best leave them?’ Robert Jordan whispered.

‘I think here. But canst thou be sure of the sentry with thy
small maquina from here ? 9

‘Is this exactly where we were on that day ? 9
‘The same tree , 9 Anselmo said so low Jordan could barely hear
him and he knew he was speaking without moving his lips as he
had spoken that first day. ‘I marked it with my knife . 9

Robert Jordan had the feeling again of it all having happened
before, but this time it came from his own repetition of a query
and Anselmo’s answer. It had been the same with Agustin, who
had asked a question about the sentries although he knew the
answer.

‘It is close enough. Even too close , 9 he whispered. ‘But the light
is behind us. We are all right here . 9

‘Then I will go now to cross the gorge and be in position at the
other end , 9 Anselmo said. Then he said, ‘Pardon me, Ingles. So
that there is no mistake. In case I am stupid . 9
‘What ? 9 breathed very softly.

‘Only to repeat it so that I will do it exactly . 9
‘When I fire, thou wilt fire. When thy man is eliminated, cross
the bridge to me. I will have the packs down there and thou wilt
do as I tell thee in the placing of the charges. Everything I will
tell thee. If aught happens to me do it thyself as I showed thee,
take thy time and do it well, wedging all securely with the
wooden wedges and lashing the grenades firmly . 9

‘It is all clear to me , 9 Anselmo said. ‘I remember it all. Now I
go. Keep thee well covered, Ingtes , when daylight comes . 9

‘When thou firest , 9 Robert Jordan said, ‘take a rest and make
very sure. Do not think of it as a man but as a target, de acuerdot
Do not shoot at the whole man but at a point. Shoot for the exact
centre of the belly - if he faces thee. At the middle of the back,
if he is looking away. Listen, old one. When I fire if the man is
sitting down he will stand up before he runs or crouches. Shoot
then. If he is still sitting down shoot. Do not wait. But make sure.
Get to within fifty yards. Thou art a hunter. Thou hast no
problem . 9

‘I will do as thou orderest , 9 Anselmo said.

‘Yes. I order it thus , 9 Robert Jordan said.

385

Pm glad I remembered to make it an order, he thought. That
helps him out. That takes some of the curse off. I hope it does,
anyway. Some of it. I had forgotten about what he told me that
first day about the killing.

‘It is thus I have ordered,’ he said. ‘Now go.’

4 Me voyj said Anselmo. ‘Until soon, Ingles .’

‘Until soon, old one,’ Robert Jordan said.

He remembered his father in the railway station and the wet-
ness of that farewell and he did not say Salud nor good-bye nor
good luck nor anything like that.

‘Hast wiped the oil from the bore of thy gun, old one?’ he
whispered. ‘So it will not throw wild?’

‘In the cave,’ Anselmo said. ‘I cleaned them all with the pull-
through.’

‘Then until soon,’ Robert Jordan said and the old man went
off, noiseless on his rope-soled shoes, swinging wide through the
trees.

Robert Jordan lay on the pine-needle floor of the forest and lis-
tened to the first stirring in the branches of the pines of the wind
that would come with daylight. He took the clip out of the sub-
machine gun and worked the lock back and forth. Then he
turned the gun, with the lock open and in the dark he put the
muzzle to his lips and blew through the barrel, the metal tasting
greasy and oily as his tongue touched the edge of the bore. He
laid the gun across his forearm, the action up so that no pine
needles or rubbish could get in it, and shucked all the cartridges
out of the clip with his thumb and on to a handkerchief he had
spread in front of him. Then, feeling each cartridge in the dark
and turning it in his fingers, he pressed and slid them one at a
time back into the clip. Now the clip was heavy again in his hand
and he slid it back into the sub-machine gun and felt it click
home. He lay on his belly behind the pine trunk, the gun across
his left forearm and watched the point of light below him. Some-
times he could not see it and then he knew that the man in the
sentry box had moved in front of the brazier. Robert Jordan lay
there and waited for daylight.

386

CHAPTER 42

During the time that Pablo had ridden back from the hills to
the cave and the time the band had dropped down to where they
had left the horses Andres had made rapid progress toward Golz’s
headquarters. Where they came on to the main highroad to Nava-
cerrada on which the trucks were rolling back from the mountain
there was a control. But when Gomez showed the sentry at the
control his safe-conduct from the Lieutenant-Colonel Miranda
the sentry put the light from a flashlight on it, showed it to the
other sentry with him, then handed it back and saluted.

4 Siga he said. ‘Continue. But without lights.’

The motor-cycle roared again and Andres was holding-tight on
to the forward seat and they were moving along the highway,
Gomez riding carefully in the traffic. None of the trucks had
lights and they were moving down the road in a long convoy.
There were loaded trucks moving up the road too, and all of
them raised a dust that Andres could not see in that dark but
could only feel as a cloud that blew in his face and that he could
bite between his teeth.

They were close behind the tailboard of a truck now, the motor-
cycle chugging, then Gomez speeded up and passed it and an-
other, and another, and another with the other trucks roaring and
rolling down past them on the left. There was a motor-car behind
them now and it blasted into the truck noise and the dust with its
klaxon again and again ; then flashed on lights that showed the
dust like a solid yellow cloud and surged past them in a whining
rise of gears and a demanding, threatening, bludgeoning of
klaxoning.

Then ahead all the trucks were stopped and riding on, working
his way ahead past ambulances, staff cars, an armoured car, an-
other, and a third, all halted, like heavy, metal, gun-jutting turtles
in the not yet settled dust, they found another control where there
had been a smash-up. A truck, halting, had not been seen by the
truck which followed it and the following truck had run into it,
smashing the rear of the first truck in and scattering cases of
small-arms ammunition over the road. One case had burst open

387

on landing and as Gomez and Andres stopped and wheeled the
motor-cycle forward through the stalled vehicles to show their
safe-conduct at the control Andres walked over the brass hulls of
the thousands of cartridges scattered across the road in the dust.
The second truck had its radiator completely smashed in. The
truck behind it was touching its tail-gate. A hundred more were
piling up behind and an overbooted officer was running back
along the road shouting to the drivers to back so that the smashed
truck could be gotten off the road.

There were too many trucks for them to be able to back unless
the officer reached the end of the ever-mounting line and stopped
it from increasing and Andres saw him running, stumbling, with
his flashlight, shouting and cursing and, in the dark, the trucks
kept coming up.

The man at the control would not give the safe-conduct back.
There were two of them, with rifles slung on their backs and flash-
lights in their hands and they were shouting too. The one carry-
ing the safe-conduct in his hand crossed the road to a truck going
in the downhill direction to tell it to proceed to the next control
and tell them there to hold all trucks until this jam was straight-
ened out. The truck driver listened and went on. Then, still hold-
ing the safe-conduct the control patrol came over, shouting, to
the truck driver whose load was spilled.

‘Leave it and get ahead for the love of God so we can clear
this {’ he shouted at the driver.

*My transmission is smashed,* the driver, who was bent over by
the rear of his truck, said.

‘Obscene your transmission. Go ahead, I say.*

‘They do not go ahead when the differential is smashed,* the
driver told him and bent down again.

‘Get thyself pulled then, get ahead so that we can get this other
obscenity off the road.’

The driver looked at him sullenly as the control man shone the
electric torch on the smashed rear of the truck.

‘Get ahead. Get ahead,’ the man shouted, still holding the safe-
conduct pass in his hand.

‘And my paper,* Oomez spoke to him. ‘My safe-conduct. We
are in a hurry.’

‘Take thy safe-conduct to hell,’ the man said and handing it to
him ran across the road to halt a 'down-coming truck.

388

‘Turn thyself at the crossroads and put thyself in position to
this ! * he shouted at the driver.

‘My orders are — *

‘Obscenity thy orders. Do as I say.’

The driver let his truck into gear and rolled straight ahead
down the road and was gone in the dust.

As Gomez started the motor-cycle ahead on to the now clear
right-hand side of the road past the wrecked truck, Andres, hold-
ing tight again, saw the control guard halting another truck and
the driver leaning from the cab and listening to him.

Now they went fast, swooping along the road that mounted
steadily toward the mountain. All forward traffic had been stalled
at the control and there were only the descending trucks passing,
passing, and passing on their left as the motor-cycle climbed fast
and steadily now until it began to overtake the mounting traffic
which had gone on ahead before the disaster at the control.

Still without lights they passed four more armoured cars, then
a long line of trucks loaded with troops. The troops were silent in
the dark and at first Andres only felt their presence rising above
him, bulking above the truck bodies through the dust as they
passed. Then another staff car came behind them blasting with
its klaxon and flicking its lights off and on, and each time the
lights shone Andres saw the troops, steel-helmeted, their rifles
vertical, their machine guns pointed up against the dark sky,
etched sharp against the night that they dropped into when the
light flicked off. Once as he passed close to a troop truck and the
lights flashed he saw their faces fixed and sad in the sudden light.
In their steel helmets, riding in the trucks in the dark toward
something that they only knew was an attack, their faces "were
drawn with each man’s own problem in the dark and the light
revealed them as they would not have looked in day, from shame
to show it to each other, until the bombardment and the attack
would commence, and no man would think about his face.

Andres now passing them truck after truck, Gomez still keep-
ing successfully ahead of the following staff car, did not think
any of this about their faces. He only thought, ‘What an army.
What equipment. What a mechanization. / V ay a genie! Look at
such people. Here we have the army of the Republic. Look at
them. Camion after camion. All uniformed alike. All with
casques of steel on their heads. Look at the mdquinas rising from

389

the trucks against the coming of planes. Look at the army that has
been budded V

And as the motor-cycle passed the high grey trucks full of
troops, grey trucks with high square cabs and square ugly radia-
tors, steadily mounting the road in the dust and the flicking lights
of the pursuing staff car, the red star of the army showing in the
light when it passed over the tail gates, showing when the light
came on to the sides of the dusty truck bodies, as they passed,
climbing steadily now, the air colder and the road starting to turn
in bends and switchbacks now, the trucks labouring and grind-
ing, some steaming in the light flashes, the motor-cycle labouring
now, too, and Andres clinging tight to the front seat as they
climbed. Andres thought this ride on a motor-cycle was mucko,
mucho. He had never been on a motor-cycle before and now
they were climbing a mountain in the midst of all the movement
that was going to an attack and, as they climbed, he knew now
there was no problem of ever being back in time for the assault
on the posts. In this movement and confusion he would be lucky
to get back by the next night. He had never seen an offensive or
any of the preparations for one before and as they rode up the road
he marvelled at the size and power of this army that the Republic
had built.

Now they rode on a long slanting, rising stretch of road that
ran across the face of the mountain and the grade was so steep
as they neared the top that Gomez told him to get down and to-
gether they pushed the motor-cycle up the last steep grade of the
pass. At the left, just past the top, there was a loop of road where
cars could turn and there were lights winking in front of a big
stone building that bulked long and dark against the night sky.

‘Let us go to ask there where the headquarters is,’ Gomez said
to Andres and they wheeled the motor-cycle over to where two
sentries stood in front of the closed door of the great stone build-
ing. Gomez leaned the motor-cycle against the wall as a motor-
cyclist in a leather suit, showing against the light from inside the
building as the door opened, came out of the door with a dispatch
case hung over his shoulder, a wooden-holstered Mauser pistol
swung against his hip. As the light went off, he found his motor-
cycle in the dark by the door, pushed it until it sputtered and
caught, then roared off up the road.

At the door Gomez spoke to one of the sentries. ‘Captain
390

Gomez of the Sixty-Fifth Brigade/ he said. ‘Can you tell me
where to find the headquarters of General Golz commanding
the Thirty-Fifth Division?’

‘It isn’t here,’ the sentry said.

’What is here?*

‘The Comandancia.’

‘What comandancia ? 9

‘Well, the Comandancia . 9

‘The comandancia of what?’

‘What art thou to ask so many questions?’ the sentrv said to
Gomez in the dark. Here on the top of the pass the skv was very
clear with the stars out and Andres, out of the dust now, could
see quite clearly in the dark. Below them, where the road turned
to the right, he could see clearly the oudine of the trucks and cars
that passed against the sky line.

‘I am Captain Rogelio Gomez of the first battalion of the Sixty-
Fifth Brigade and I ask where is the headquarters of General
Golz , 9 Gomez said.

The sentry opened the door a little way. ‘Call the corporal of
the guard,’ he shouted inside.

Just then a big staff car came up over the turn of the road and
circled toward the big stone building where Andres and Gomez
were standing waiting for the corporal of the guard. It came to-
ward them and stopped outside the door.

A large man, old and heavy, in an oversized khaki beret, such
as chasseurs a. pied wear in the French Army, wearing an over-
coat, carrying a map case and wearing a pistol strapped around
his greatcoat, got out of the back of the car with two other men
in the uniform of the International Brigades.

He spoke in French, which Andres did not understand and of
which Gomez, who had been a barber, knew only a few words, to
his chauffeur telling him to get the car away from the door and
into shelter.

As he came into the door with the other two officers, Gomez
saw his face clearly in the light and recognized him. He had seen
him at political meetings and he had often read articles by him
in Mundo Obrero translated from the French. He recognized his
bushy eyebrows, his watery grey eyes, his chin and the double
chin under it, and he knew him for one of France’s great modern
revolutionary figures who had led the mutiny of the French Navy

39 r

in the Black Sea. Gomez knew this man’s high political place in
the International Brigades and he knew this man would know
where Golz’s headquarters were and be able to direct him there.
He did not know what this man had become with time, disap-
pointment, bitterness both domestic and political, and thwarted
ambition and that to question him was one o£ the most dangerous
things that any man could do. Knowing nothing of this he stepped
forward into the path of this man, saluted with his clenched fist,
and said, ‘Comrade Massart, we are the bearers of a dispatch for
General Golz. Can you direct us to his headquarters? It is urgent.’

The tall, heavy old man looked at Gomez with his out-thrust
head and considered him carefully with his watery eyes. Even
here at the front in the light of a bare electric bulb, he having just
come in from driving in an open car on a brisk night, his grey
face had a look of decay. His face looked as though it were
modelled from the waste material you find under the claws of a
very old lion.

‘You have what, Comrade?’ he asked Gomez, speaking Span-
ish with a strong Catalan accent. His eyes glanced sideways at
Andres, slid over him, and went back to Gomez.

‘A dispatch for General Golz to be delivered at his head-
quarters, Comrade Massart.’

‘Where is it from, Comrade?’

‘From behind the fascist lines,’ Gomez said.

Andre Massart extended his hand for the dispatch and the other
papers. He glanced at them and put them in his pocket.

‘Arrest them both,’ he said to the corporal of the guard. ‘Have
them searched and bring them to me when I send for them.’

With the dispatch in his pocket he strode on into the interior
of the big stone house.

Outside in the guard room Gomez and Andres were being
searched by the guard.

‘What passes with that man?’ Gomez said to one of the guards.

‘Estd loco the guard said. ‘He is crazy.’

‘No. He is a political figure of great importance,’ Gomez said.
‘He is the chief commissar of the International Brigades.’

‘ Aspesar de eso, estd loco ,’ the corporal of the guard said. ‘All
the same he’s crazy. What do you behind the fascist lines?’

‘This comrade is a guerrilla from there,’ Gomez told him while
the man searched him. ‘He brings a dispatch to General Golz.

392

Guard well my papers. Be careful with that money and that bullet
on the string. It is from my first wound at Guadarrama.’

‘Don’t worry, the corporal said. ‘Everything will be in this
drawer. Why didn’t you ask me where Goiz was?’

‘We tried to. I asked the sentry, and he called you.*

‘But then came the crazy and you asked him. No one should
ask him anything. He is crazy. Thy Golz is up the road three
kilometres from here and to the right in the rocks of the forest.’

‘Can you not let us go to him now?’

‘Nay. It would be my head. I must take thee to the crazy. Be-
sides, he has thy dispatch.’

‘Can you not tell someone?’

‘Yes,’ the corporal said. ‘I will tell the first responsible one I see.
All know that he is crazy.’

‘I had always taken him for a great figure,* Gomez said. ‘For
one of the glories of France.’

‘He may be a glory and all,’ the corporal said and put his hand
on Andres’ shoulder. ‘But he is as crazy as a bedbug. He has a
mania for shooting people.’

‘Truly shooting them?’

‘Como lo oyesj the corporal said. ‘That old one kills more than
the bubonic plague. Mat mds que la peste bubonica. But he
doesn’t kill fascists like we do. Que pa. Not in joke. Mata btchos
raros. He kills rare things. Trotzkyites. Divagationers. Any type
of rare beasts.’

Andres did not understand any of this.

‘When we were at Escorial we shot I don’t know how many
for him,’ the corporal said. ‘We always furnish the firing party.
The men of the Brigades would not shoot their own men. Espe-
cially the French. To avoid difficulties it is always us who do it.
We shot French. We have shot Belgians. We have shot others of
divers nationality. Of all types. Tiene mania de jusilar gente.
Always for political things. He’s crazy. Purifica mds que el Sal -
varsdn. He purifies more than Salvarsan.’

‘But you will tell someone of this dispatch?’

‘Yes, man. Surely. I know every one of these two Brigades.
Everyone comes through here. I know even up to and through
the Russians, although only few speak Spanish. We will keep
this crazy from shooting Spaniards.’

‘But the dispatch.’

393

‘The dispatch, too. Do not worry, Comrade. We know how to
deal with this crazy. He is only dangerous with his own people.
We understand him now.’

‘Bring in the two prisoners/ came the voice of Andre Massart.

V Quereis echar un trago ?’ the corporal asked. ‘Do you want a
drink?*

‘Why not?*

The corporal took a bottle of anis from a cupboard and both
Gomez and Andres drank. So did the corporal. He wiped his
mouth on his hand.

‘Vamonos’ he said.

They went out of the guard room with the swallowed burn of
the anis warming their mouths, their bellies, and their hearts and
walked down the hall and entered the room where Massart sat
behind a long table, his map spread in front of him, his red-and-
blue pencil, with which he played at being a general officer, in his
hand. To Andres it was only one more thing. There had been
many to-night. There were always many. If your papers were in
order and your heart was good you were in no danger. Eventually
they turned you loose and you were on your way. But the Ingles
had said to hurry. He knew now he could never get back for the
bridge but they had a dispatch to deliver and this old man there
at the table had put it in his pocket.

‘Stand there/ Massart said without looking up.

‘Listen, Comrade Massart/ Gomez broke out, the anis fortify-
ing his anger. ‘Once to-night we have been impeded by the ignor-
ance of the anarchists. Then by the sloth of a bureaucratic fascist.
Now by thy oversuspicion of a Communist/

‘Close your mouth/ Massart said without looking up. ‘This is
not a meeting.’

‘Comrade Massart, this is a matter of the utmost urgence/
Gomez said. ‘Of the greatest importance.’

The corporal and the soldier with them were taking a lively
interest in this as though they were at a play they had seen many
times but whose excellent moments they could always savour.

‘Everything is of urgence/ Massart said. ‘All things are of im-
portance.’ Now he looked up at them, holding the pencil. ‘How
did you know Golz was here? Do you understand how serious it
is to come asking for an individual general before an attack? How
could you know such a general would be here? ’

394

‘Tell him, tu Gomez said to Andres,

‘Comrade General/ Andres started - Andre Massart did not
correct him in the mistake in rank — ‘1 was given that packet on
the other side of the lines

‘On the other side of the lines?* Massart said. ‘Yes, I heard him
say you came from the fascist lines/

‘It was given to me, Comrade General, by an Ingles named
Roberto who had come to us as a dynamiter for this of the bridge.
Understandeth ? *

‘Continue thy story,’ Massart said to Andres; using the term
story as you would say lie, falsehood, or fabrication.

‘Well, Comrade General, the Ingles told me to bring it to the
General Golz with all speed. He makes an attack in these hill!
now on this day and all we ask is to take it to him now promptly
if it pleases the Comrade General.’

Massart shook his head again. He was looking at Andres but
he was not seeing him.

Golz, he thought in a mixture of horror and exultation as a man
might feel hearing that a business enemy had been killed in a par-
ticularly nasty motor accident or that someone you hated but
whose probity you had never doubted had been guilty of defalca-
tion. That Golz should be one of them, too. That Golz should be
in such obvious communication with the fascists. Golz that he
had known for nearly twenty years. Golz who had captured the
gold train that winter with Lucacz in Siberia. Golz who had
fought against Kolchak, apd in Poland. In the Caucasus. In
China, and here since the first October. But he had been close to
Tukachevsky. To Voroshilov, yes, too. But to Tukachevsky. And
to who else? Here to Karkov, of course. And to Lucacz. But all
the Hungarians had been intriguers. He hated Gall. Golz hated
Gall. Remember that. Make a note of that. Golz has always hated
Gall. But he favours Putz. Remember that. And Duval is his
chief of staff. See what stems from that. You’ve heard him say
Copic’s a fool. That is definitive. That exists. And now this dis-
patch from the fascist lines. Only by pruning out these rotten
branches can the tree remain healthy and grow. The rot must be-
come apparent for it is to be destroyed. But Golz of all men. That
Golz should be one of the traitors. He knew that you could trust
no one. No one. Ever, Not your wife. Not your brother. Not your
oldest comrade. No one. Ever.

395

"Take them away/ he said to the guards. ‘Guard them care-
fully/ The corporal looked at the soldier. This had been very quiet
for one of Massart’s performances.

‘Comrade Massart/ Gomez said. ‘Do not be insane. Listen to
me, a loyal officer and comrade. That is a dispatch that must be
delivered. This comrade has brought it through the fascist lines to
give to Comrade General Golz/

‘Take them away/ Massart said, now kindly, to the guard. He
was sorry for them as human beings if it should be necessary to
liquidate them. But it was the tragedy of Golz that oppressed him.
That it should be Golz, he thought. He would take the fascist
communication at once to Varloff. No, better he would take it to
Golz himself and watch him as he received it. That was what he
would do. How could he be sure of Varloff if Golz was one of
them? No. This was a thing to be very careful about.

Andres turned to Gomez. ‘You mean he is not going to send
the dispatch?’ he asked, unbelieving.

‘Don’t you see?’ Gomez said.

*/M<? cago en su puta madrel * Andres said. ‘Estd loco /

‘Yes/ Gomez said. ‘He is crazy. You are crazy! Hear!
Crazy ! * he shouted at Massart who was back now bending over
the map with his red-and-blue pencil. ‘Hear me, you crazy
murderer?’

‘Take them away,’ Massart said to the guard. ‘Their minds are
unhinged by their great guilt.’

There was a phrase the corporal recognized. He had heard that
before.

‘You crazy murderer !’ Gomez shouted.

‘Hi jo de la gran puta / Andres said to him. ‘Loco*

The stupidity of this man angered him. If he was, a crazy let
him be removed as a crazy. Let the dispatch be taken from his
pocket. God damn this crazy to hell. His heavy Spanish anger
was rising out of his usual calm and good temper. In a little while
it would blind him.

Massart, looking at his map, shook his head sadly as the guards
took Gomez and Andres out. The guards had enjoyed hearing
him cursed but on the whole they had been disappointed in the
performance. They had seen much better ones. Andre Massart
did not mind the men cursing him. So many men had cursed him
at the end. He was always genuinely sorry for them as human

396

beings. He always told himself that and it was one of the last true
ideas that was left to him that had ever been his own.

He sat there, his moustache and his eyes focused on the map, on
the map that he never truly understood, on the brown tracing of
the contours that were traced fine and concentric as a spider’s
web. He could see the heights and the valleys from the contours
but he never really understood why it should he this height and
why this valley was the one. But at the General Staff where, be-
cause of the system of Political Commissars, he could intervene
as the political head of the Brigades, he would put his finger
on such and such a 1 umbered, brown-th in-line-encircled spot
among the greens of woods cut by the lines of roads that parallel
the never casual winding of a river and say, ‘There. That is th*e
point of weakness.’

Gail and Copic, who were men of politics and of ambition,
would agree, and later, men who never saw the map, but heard
the number of the hill before they left their starting place and had
the earth or diggings on it pointed out, would climb its side to
find their death along its slope or, being halted by machine guns
placed in olive groves would never get up it at all. Or on other
fronts they might scale it easily and be no better off than they had
been before. But when Massart put his finger on the map in Golz’s
staff the scar-headed, white-faced General’s jaw muscles would
tighten and he would think, ‘I should shoot you, Andre Massart,
before I let you put that grey rotten finger on a contour map of
mine. Damn you to hell for all the men you’ve killed by interfer-
ing in matters you know nothing of. Damn the day they named
tractor factories and villages and co-operatives for you so that you
are a symbol that I cannot touch. Go and suspect and exhort and
intervene and denounce and butcher in some other place and
leave my staff alone.’

But instead of saying that Golz would only lean back away
from the leaning bulk, the pushing finger, the watery grey eyes,
the grey- white moustache, and the bad breath and say, ‘Yes, Com-
rade Massart. I see your point. It is not well taken, however, and
I do not agree. You can try to go over my head if you like. Yes.
You can make it a Party matter as you say. But I do not
agree/

So now Andr£ Massart sat working over his map at the bare
table with the raw light of the unshaded electric light bulb over

397

his head, the overwide beret pulled forward to shade his eyes,
referring to the mimeographed copy of the orders for the attack
and slowly and carefully and laboriously working them out on
the maps as a young officer might work a problem at a staff col-
lege. He was engaged in war. In his mind he was commanding
troops; he had the tight to interfere and this he believed to con-
stitute command. So he sat there with Robert Jordan’s dispatch
to Golz in his pocket and Gomez and Andres waited in the guard
room and Robert Jordan lay in the woods above the bridge.

It is doubtful if the outcome of Andres’ mission would have
been any different if he and Gomez had been allowed to proceed
without Andre Massart’s hindrance. There was no one at the
"front with sufficient authority to cancel the attack. The machin-
ery had been in motion much too long for it to be stopped sud-
denly now. There is a great inertia about all military operations
of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and move-
ment is under way they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate.

But on this night the old man, his beret pulled forward, was
still sitting at the table with his map when the door opened and
Karkov the Russian journalist came in with two other Russians
in civilian clothes, leather coats, and caps. The corporal of the
guard closed the door reluctantly behind them. Karkov had been
the first responsible man he had been able to communicate with.

‘Tovarich Massart,’ said Karkov in his politely disdainful lisp-
ing voice and smiled, showing his bad teeth.

Massart stood up. He did not like Karkov, but Karkov, coming
from Pravda and in direct communication with Stalin, was at this
moment one of the three most important men in Spain.

‘Tovarich Karkov,* he said.

‘You are preparing the attack?* Karkov said insolendy, nod-
ding toward the map.

T am studying it,* Massart answered.

‘Are you attacking? or is it Golz?’ Karkov asked smoothly.

‘I am only a commissar, as you know,’ Massart told him.

‘No,’ Karkov said. ‘You are modest. You are really a general.
You have your map and your field glasses. But were you not an
admiral once. Comrade Massart?*

‘I was a gunner’s mate,* said Massart. It was a lie. He had really
been a chief yeoman at the time of the mutiny. But he thought
now, always, that he had been a gunner’s mate.

' 398

‘Ah, I thought you were a first-class yeoman/ Karkov said. ‘I
always get my facts wrong. It is the mark of the journalist*

The other Russians had taken no part in the conversation. They
were both looking over Massart’s shoulder at the map and occa-
sionally making a remark to each other in their own language.
Massart and Karkov spoke French after the first greeting,

‘It is better not to get facts wrong in Pravda Massart said. He
said it brusquely to build himself up again. Karkov always punc-
tured him. The French word is degonfier and Massart was wor-
ried and made wary by him. It was hard, when Karkov spoke, to
remember with what importance he, Andre Massart, came from
the Central Committee of the French Communist Party. It was
hard to remember, too, that he was untouchable. Karkov seemed
always to touch him so lightly and whenever he wished. Now
Karkov said, ‘I usually correct them before I send them to Pravda.

I am quite accurate in Pravda. Tell me, Comrade Massart, have
you heard anything of any message coming through for Golz
from one of our partisan group operating toward Segovia ? There
is an American comrade there named Jordan that we should have
heard from. There have been reports of fighting there behind the
fascist lines. He would have sent a message through to Golz,*

‘An American?* Massart asked. Andres had said an Ingles. So
that is what it was. So he had been mistaken. Why had those fools
spoken to him anyway ?

‘Yes,’ Karkov looked at him contemptuously, *a young Ameri-
can of slight political development but a great way with the
Spaniards and a fine partisan record. Just give me the dispatch.
Comrade Massart. It has been delayed enough.*

‘What dispatch?’ Massart asked. It was a very stupid thing to
say and he knew it. But he was not able to admit he was wrong
that quickly and he said it anyway to delay the moment of
humiliation.

‘And the safe-conduct pass,’ Karkov said through his bad teeth.
Andre Massart put his hand in his pocket and laid the dispatch
on the table. He looked Karkov squarely in the eye. All right. He
was wrong and there was nothing he could do about it now but
he was not accepting any humiliation. ‘And the safe-conduct
pass,* JCarkov said softly.

Massart laid it beside the dispatch.

‘Comrade Corporal,’ Karkov called in Spanish.

399

The corporal opened the door and came in. He looked quickly
at Andre Massart who stared back at him like an old boar which
has been brought to bay by hounds. There was no fear on Mas-
sart’s face and no humiliation. He was only angry, and he was
only temporarily at bay. He knew these dogs could never hold
him.

‘Take these to the two comrades in the guard room and direct
them to General Golz’s headquarters/ Karkov said. ‘There has
been too much delay/

The corporal went out and Massart looked after him, then
looked at Karkov.

‘Tovarich Massart/ Karkov said, ‘I am going to find out just
how untouchable you are/

Massart looked straight at him and said nothing.

‘Don’t start to have any plans about the corporal, either/
Karkov went on. ‘It was not the corporal. I saw the two men in
the guard room and they spoke to me’ (this was a lie). ‘I hope all
men always will speak to me’ (this was the truth although it was
the corporal who had spoken). But Karkov had this belief in the
good which could come from his own accessibility and the human-
izing possibility of benevolent intervention. It was the one thing
he was never cynical about.

‘You know when I am in the U.S.S.R. people write to me in
Pravda when there is an injustice in a town in Azerbaijan. Did
you know that? They say, “Karkov will help us.” ’

Andre Massart looked at him with no expression on his face
except anger and dislike. There was nothing in his mind now but
that Karkov had done something against him. All right, Karkov,
power and all, could watch out.

‘This is something else/ Karkov went on, ‘but it is the same
principle. I am going to find out just how untouchable you are,
Comrade Massart. I would like to know if it could not be possible
to change the name of that tractor factory.’

Andre Massart looked away from him and back to the map.

‘What did young Jordan say?’ Karkov asked him.

‘I did not read it/ Andre Massart said. ‘Er maintenant fiche mot
la paix 9 Comrade Karkov.’

‘Good/ said Karkov. ‘I leave you to your military labours/

He stepped out of the room and walked to the guard room.
Andres and Gomez were already gone and he stood there a mo-
400

ment looking up the road and at the mountain tops beyond that
showed now in the first grey of daylight. We must get on up
there, he thought. It will be soon, now.

Andres and Gomez were on the motor-cycle on the road again
and it was getting light. Now Andres, holding again to the back
of the seat ahead of him as the motor-cycle climbed turn after
switchback turn in a faint grey mist that lay over the top of the
pass, felt the motor-cycle speed under him, then skid and stop and
they were standing by the motor-cycle on a long, down-slope of
road, and in the woods, on their left, were tanks covered with pine
branches. There were troops here all through the woods. Andres
saw men carrying the long poles of stretchers over their shoulders.
Three staff cars were off the road to the right, in under the trees,
with branches laid against their sides and other pine branches
over their tops.

Gomez wheeled the motor-cycle up to one of them. He leaned
it against a pine tree and spoke to the chauffeur w T ho was sitting
by the car, his back against a tree.

Til take you to him/ the chauffeur said. Tut thy moto out of
sight and cover it with these.’ He pointed to a pile of cut branches.

With the sun just starting to come through the high branches of
the pine trees, Gomez and Andres followed the chauffeur, w T ho$e
name was Vicente, through the pines across the road and up the
slope to the entrance of a dugout from the roof of which signal
wires ran on up over the wooded slope. They stood outside while
the chauffeur went in and Andres admired the construction of
the dugout which showed only as a hole in the hillside, with no
dirt scattered about, but which he could see, from the entrance,
was both deep and profound with men moving around in it freely
with no need to duck their heads under the heavy timbered roof.

Vicente, the chauffeur, came out.

‘He is up above where they are deploying for the attack/ he
said. ‘I gave it to his Chief of Staff. He signed for it. Here.’

He handed Gomez the receipted envelope. Gomez gave it to
Andres who looked at it and put it inside his shirt.

‘What is the name of him who signed?’ he asked.

‘Duval/ Vicente said.

‘Good/ said Andres. ‘He was one of three to whom I might
give it.’

‘Should we wait for an answer?’ Gomez asked Andres.

401

‘It might be best. Though where I will find the Ingles and the
others after that of the bridge neither I nor God knows/

‘Come wait with me/ Vicente said, ‘until the General returns.
And I will get thee coffee. Thou must be hungry/

‘And these tanks/ Gomez said to him.

They were passing the branch-covered, mud-coloured tanks,
each with two deep-ridged tracks over the pine needles showing
where they had swung and backed from the road. Their 45-mm.
guns jutted horizontally under the branches and the drivers and
gunners in their leather coats and ridged helmets sat with their
backs against the trees or lay sleeping on the ground.

‘These are the reserve/ Vicente said. ‘Also these troops are in
reserve. Those who commence the attack are above/

‘They are many/ Andres said.

‘Yes/ Vicente said. ‘It is a full division/

Inside the dugout Duval, holding the opened dispatch from
Robert Jordan in his left hand, glancing at his wrist watch on the
same hand, reading the dispatch for the fourth time, each time
feeling the sweat come out from under his armpit and run down
his flank, said into the telephone, ‘Get me position Segovia, then.
He’s left? Get me position Avila/

He kept on with the phone. It wasn’t any good. He had talked
to both brigades. Golz had been up to inspect the dispositions for
the attack and was on his way to an observation post. He called
the observation post and he was not there.

‘Get me planes one/ Duval said, suddenly taking all responsi-
bility. He would take responsibility for holding it up. It was
better to hold it up. You could not send them to a surprise attack
against an enemy that was waiting for it. You couldn’t do it. It
was just murder. You couldn’t. You mustn’t. No matter what.
They could shoot him if they wanted. He would call the airfield
directly and get the bombardment cancelled. But suppose it’s just
a holding attack? Suppose we were supposed to draw off all that
material and those forces? Suppose that is what it is for? They
never tell you it is a holding attack when you make it.

‘Cancel the call to planes one/ he told the signaller. ‘Get me the
Sixty-Ninth Brigade observation post.’

He was still calling^ there when he heard the first sound of the
planes.

It was just then he got through 'to the observation post.

402

‘Yes/ Golz said quietly.

He was sitting leaning back against the sandbag, his feet
against a rock, a cigarette hung from his lower lip, and he was
looking up and over his shoulder while he was talking. He was
seeing the expanding wedges of threes, silver and thundering in
the sky that were coming over the far shoulder of the mountain
where the first sun was striking. He watched them come shining
and beautiful in the sun. He saw the twin circles of light where
the sun shone on the propellers as they came.

‘Yes/ he said into the telephone, speaking in French because it
was Duval on the wire. "Notts sommes foutus. Oui. Comme tou-
jour s. Out. Cest dommage. Oui. It's a shame it came too late.’

His eyes, watching the planes coming, were very proud. He
saw the red wing-markings now and he watched their steady,
stately roaring advance. This was how it could be. These were
our planes. They had come, crated on ships, from the Black
Sea through the Straits of Marmora, through the Dardanelles,
through the Mediterranean, and to here, unloaded lovingly at
Alicante, assembled ably, tested and found perfect, and now
flown in lovely hammering precision, the V’s tight and pure as
they came now high and silver in the morning sun to blast those
ridges across there and blow them roaring high so that we can go
through.

Golz knew that once they had passed overhead and on, the
bombs would fall, looking like porpoises in the air as they tum-
bled. And then the ridge tops would spout and roar in jumping
clouds and disappear in one great blowing cloud. Then the tanks
would grind clanking up those two slopes and after them would
go his two brigades. And if it had been a surprise they could go
on and down and over and through, pausing, cleaning up, deal-
ing with, much to do, much to be done intelligently with the tanks
helping, with the tanks wheeling and returning, giving covering
fire and others bringing the attackers up, then slipping on and
over and through and pushing down beyond. This was how it
would be if there was not reason and if all did what they should.

There were the two ridges and there were the tanks ahead and
there were his two good brigades ready to leave the woods and
here came the planes now. Everything he had to do had been done
as it should be.

But as he watched the planes, almost* up to him now, he felt

4°3

sick at his stomach for he knew from having heard Jordan’s dis-
patch over the phone that there would be no one on those two
ridges. They’d be withdrawn a little way below in narrow
trenches to escape the fragments, or hiding in the timber and
when the bombers passed they’d get back up there with their
machine guns and their automatic weapons and the anti-tank
guns Jordan had said went up the road, and it would be one
famous balls up more. But the planes, now coming deafeningly,
were how it could have been and Golz watching them, looking
up, said into the telephone, ‘No. Rien a faire . Rien. Faut pas
penser . Faut accepter *

Golz watched the planes with his hard proud eyes that knew
how things could be and how they would be instead and said,
proud of how they could be, believing in how they could be, even
if they never were, ‘Bon. Nous ferons notre petit possible / and
hung up.

But Duval did not hear him. Sitting at the table holding the
receiver, all he heard was the roar of the planes and he thought,
now, maybe this time, listen to them come, maybe the bombers
will blow them all off, maybe we will get a break-through, maybe
he will get the reserves he asked for, maybe this is it, maybe this
is the time. Go on. Come on. Go on. The roar was such that he
could not hear what he was thinking.

CHAPTER 43

Robert Jordan lay behind the trunk of a pine tree on the slope
of the hill above the road and the bridge and watched it become
daylight. He loved this hour of the day always and now he
watched it; feeling it grey within him, as though he were a part
of the slow lightening that comes before the rising of the sun;
when solid things darken and space lightens and the lights that
have shone in the night go yellow and then fade as the day comes.
The pine trunks below him were hard and clear now, their trunks
solid and brown and the road was shiny with a wisp of mist over
it. The dew had wet him and the forest floor was soft and he felt
the give of the brown, ^dropped pine needles under his elbows.
Below he saw, through* the light mist that rose from the stream
.404

bed, the steel of the bridge, straight and rigid across the gap, with
the wooden sentry boxes at each end. But as he looked the struc-
ture of the bridge was still spidery and fine in the mist that hung
over the stream.

He saw the sentry now in his box as he stood, his back with the
hanging blanket coat topped by the steel casque on his head show-
ing as he leaned forward over the hole-punched petrol tin of the
brazier, warming his hands. Robert Jordan heard the stream, far
down in the rocks, and he saw a faint, thin smoke that rose from
the sentry box.

He looked at his watch and thought, I wonder if Andres got
through to GolzP If we are going to blow it I would like to
breathe very slowly and slow up the time again and feel it. Do
you think he made it? Andres? And if he did would they call it
off? If they had time to call it off? Que va. Do not worrv. They
will or they won’t. There are no more decisions and in a little
while you will know. Suppose the attack is successful. Golz said
it could be. That there was a possibility. With our tanks coming
down that road, the people coming through from the right and
down and past La Granja, and the whole left of the mountains
turned. Why don’t you ever think of how it is to win? You’ve
been on the defensive for so long that you can’t think of that.
Sure. But that was before all that stuff went up this road. That
was before all the planes came. Don’t be so naive. But remember
this that as long as we can hold them here we keep the fascists tied
up. They can’t attack any other country until they finish with us
and they can never finish with us. If the French help at all, if only
they leave the frontier open and if we get planes from America
they can never finish with us. Never, if we get anything at all.
These people will fight for ever if they’re well armed.

No, you must not expect victory here, not for several years
maybe. This is just a holding attack. You must not get illusions
about it now. Suppose we got a break-through to-day? This is our
first big attack. Keep your sense of proportion. But what if we
should have it? Don’t get excited, he told himself. Remember
what went up the road. You’ve done what you could about that.
We should have portable short-wave sets, though. We will, in
time. But we haven’t yet. You just watch now and do what you
should.

To-day is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But

4°5

on what you do to-day. It’s been that way all this year. It’s been
that way so many times. All of this war is that way. You are get-
ting very pompous in the early morning, he told himself. Look
there what’s coming now.

He saw the two men in blanket capes and steel helmets. come
around the corner of the road walking toward the bridge, their
rifles slung over their shoulders. One stopped at the far end of
the bridge and was out of sight in the sentry box. The other came
on across the bridge, walking slowly and heavily. He stopped on
the bridge and spat into the gorge, then came on slowly to the
near end of the bridge where the other sentry spoke to him and
then started off back over the bridge. The sentry who was relieved
walked faster than the other had done (because he’s going to
coffee, Robert Jordan thought) but he too spat down into the
gorge.

I wonder if that is superstition? Robert Jordan thought. I’ll
have to take me a spit in that gorge too. If I can spit by then. No.
It can’t be very powerful medicine. It can’t work. I’ll have to
prove it doesn’t work before I am out there.

The new sentry had gone inside the box and sat down. His rifle
with the bayonet fixed was leaning against the wall. Robert Jordan
took his glasses from his shirt pocket and turned the eyepieces
until the end of the bridge showed sharp and grey-painted-metal
clear. Then he moved them on to the sentry box.

The sentry sat leaning against the wall. His helmet hung on a
peg and his face showed clearly. Robert Jordan saw he was the
same man who had been there on guard two days before in the
afternoon watch. He was wearing the same knitted stocking*
cap. And he had not shaved. His cheeks were sunken and his
cheekbones prominent. He had bushy eyebrows that grew to-
gether in the centre. He looked sleepy and as Robert Jordan
watched him he yawned. Then he took out a tobacco pouch and
a packet of papers and rolled himself a cigarette. He tried to make
a lighter work and finally put it in his pocket and went over to
the brazier, leaned over, reached inside, brought up a piece of
charcoal, juggled it in one hand while he blew on it, then lit the
cigarette and tossed the lump of charcoal back into the brazier.

Robert Jordan, looking through the Zeiss 8-power glasses,
watched his face as he leaned against the wall of the sentry box
406

drawing on the cigarette. Then he took the glasses down, folded
them together, and put them in his pocket.

I won’t look at him again, he told himself.

He lay there and watched the road and tried not to think at all.
A squirrel chattered from a pine tree below him and Robert Jor-
dan watched the squirrel come down the tree trunk, stopping on
his way down to turn his head and look toward where the man
was watching. He saw the squirrel’s eyes, small and bright and
watched his tail jerk in excitement. Then the squirrel crossed to
another tree, moving on the ground in long, small-pawed, tail-
exaggerated bounds. On the tree trunk he looked back at Robert
Jordan, then pulled himself around the trunk and out of sight.
Then Robert Jordan heard the squirrel chatter from a high branch
of the pine tree and he watched him there, spread flat along the
branch, his tail jerking.

Robert Jordan looked down through the pines to the sentry box
again. He would like to have had the squirrel with him in his
pocket. He would like to have had anything that he could touch.
He rubbed his elbows against the pine needles but it was not the
same. Nobody knows how lonely you can be when you do this.
Me, though, I know. I hope that Rabbit will get out of this all
right. Stop that now. Yes, sure. But I can hope that and I do.
That I blow it well and that she gets out all right. Good. Sure.
Just that. That is all I want now.

He lay there now and looked away from the road and the sentry
box and across to the far mountain. Just do not think at all, he
told himself. He lay there quiedy and watched the morning come.
It was a fine early summer morning and it came very fast now in
the end of May. Once a motor-cyclist in a leather coat and all-
leather helmet with an automatic rifle in a holster by his left leg
came across the bridge and went on up the road. Once an am-
bulance crossed the bridge, passed below him, and went up the
road. But that was all. He smelled the pines and he heard the
stream and the bridge showed clear now and beautiful in the
morning light. He lay there behind the pine tree, with the sub-
machine gun across his left forearm, and he never looked at the
sentry box again until, long after it seemed that it was never com-
ing, that nothing could happen on such a lovely late May morn-
ing, he heard the sudden, clustered, thudding of the bombs.

As he heard the bombs, the first thumping noise of them, be-
407

fore the echo of them came back in thunder from the mountain,
Robert Jordan drew in a long breath and lifted the sub-machine
gun from where it lay. His arm felt stiff from its weight and his
fingers were heavy with reluctance.

The man in the sentry box stood up when he heard the bombs.
Robert Jordan saw him reach for his rifle and step forward out
of the box listening. He stood in the road with the sun shining
on him. The knitted cap was on the side of his head and the sun
was on his unshaved face as he looked up into the sky toward
where the planes were bombing.

There was no mist on the road now and Robert Jordan saw the
man, clearly and sharply, standing there on the road looking up
at the sky. The sun shone bright on him through the trees.

Robert Jordan felt his own breath tight now as though a strand
of wire bound his chest and, steadying his elbows, feeling the
corrugations of the forward grip against his Rngers, he put the
oblong of the foresight, settled now in the notch of the rear,
on to the centre of the man’s chest, and squeezed the trigger
gently.

He felt the quick, liquid, spastic lurching of the gun against
his shoulder and on the road the man, looking surprised and hurt,
slid forward on his knees and his forehead doubled to the road.
His rifle fell by him and lay there with one of the man’s fingers
twisted through the trigger guard, his wrist bent forward. The
rifle lay, bayonet forward on the road. Robert Jordan looked
away from the man lying with his head doubled under on the
road to the bridge, and the sentry box at the other end. He could
not see the other sentry, and he looked down the slope to the
right where he knew Agustm was hidden. Then he heard An-
selmo shoot, the shot smashing an echo back from the gorge.
Then he heard him shoot again.

With the second shot came the cracking boom of grenades from
around the corner below the bridge. Then there was the noise of
grenades from well up the road to the left. Then he heard rifle-
firing up the road and from below came the noise of Pablo’s
cavalry automatic rifle spat-spat-spat-spatting into the noise of the
grenades. He saw Anselmo scrambling down the steep cut to the
far end of the bridge and he slung the sub-machine gun over his
shoulder and picked up the two heavy packs from behind the pine
trunks and with one in each hand, the packs pulling his arms so
408

that he felt the tendons would pull out of his shoulders, he ran
lurching down the steep slope to the road.

As he ran he heard Agustrn shouting, 4 Buena caza, Ingles.
Buena caza!’ and he thought, ‘Nice hunting, like hell, nice hunt-
ing,’ and just then he heard Anselmo shoot at the far end of the
bridge, the noise of the shot clanging in the steel girders. He
passed the sentry where he lay and ran on to the bridge, the packs
swinging.

The old man came running toward him, holding his carbine
in one hand, ‘ Sin novedad / he shouted. ‘There’s nothing wrong.
Tuve que rematarlo . I had to finish him.’

Robert Jordan, kneeling, opening the packs in the centre of the
bridge, taking out his material, saw that tears were running down
Anselmo’s cheeks through the grey beard stubble.

l Ya mate uno tambien / he said to Anselmo. ‘I killed one too/
and jerked his head toward where the sentry lay hunched over in
the road at the end of the bridge.

‘Yes, man, yes/ Anselmo said. ‘We have to iill them and we
kill them.’

Robert Jordan was climbing down into the framework of the
bridge. The girders were cold and wet with dew under his hands
and he climbed carefully, feeling the sun on his back, bracing
himself in a bridge truss, hearing the noise of the tumbling water
below him, hearing firing, too much firing, up the road at the
upper post. He was sweating heavily now and it was cool under
the bridge. He had a coil of wire around one arm and a pair of
pliers hung by a thong from his wrist.

‘Hand me that down a package at a time, viejo / he called up
to Anselmo. The old man leaned far over the edge handing down
the oblong blocks of explosive and Robert Jordan reached up for
them, shoved them in where he wanted them, packed them close,
braced them, ‘Wedges, viejo 1 Give me wedges!’ smelling the
fresh shingle smell of the new whittled wedges as he tapped them
in tight to hold the charge between the girders.

Now as he worked, placing, bracing, wedging, lashing tight
with wire, thinking only of demolition, working fast and skil-
fully as a surgeon works, he heard a rattle of Bring from below on
the road. Then there was the noise of a grenade. Then another,
booming through the rushing noise the water made. Then it was
quiet from that direction.

4°9

‘Damn/ he thought. ‘I wonder what hit them then?’

There was still firing up the road at the upper post. Too damned
much firing, and he was lashing two grenades side by side on top
of the braced blocks of explosive, winding the wire over their
corrugations so they would hold tight and firm and lashing it
tight; twisting it with the pliers. He felt of the whole thing and
then, to make it more solid, tapped in a wedge above the grenades
that blocked the whole charge firmly in against the steel.

‘The other side now, viejo* he shouted up to Anselmo and
climbed across through the trestling, like a bloody Tarzan in a
rolled steel forest, he thought, and then coming out from under
the dark, the stream tumbling below him, he looked up and saw
Anselmo 1 s face as he reached the packages of explosive down to
him. Goddamn good face, he thought. Not crying now. That’s all
to the good. And one side done. This side now and we’re done.
This will drop it like what all. Come on. Don’t get excited. Do it.
Clean and fast as^the last one. Don’t fumble with it. Take your
time. Don’t try to do it faster than you can. You can’t lose now.
Nobody can keep you from blowing one side now. You’re doing
it just the way you should. This is a cool place. Christ, it feels cool
as si wine cellar and there’s no crap. Usually working under a
stone bridge it’s full of crap. This is a dream bridge. A bloody
dream bridge. It’s the old man on top who’s in a bad spot. Don’t
try to do it faster than you can. I wish that shooting would be
over up above. ‘Give me some wedges, vtejoj I don’t like that
shooting still. Pilar has got in trouble there. Some of the post
must have been out. Out back; or behind the mill. They’re still
shooting. That means there’s somebody in the mill. And all that
damned sawdust. Those big piles of sawdust. Sawdust, when it’s
old and packed, is good stuff to fight behind. There must be
several of them still. It’s quiet below with Pablo. I wonder what
that second flare-up was. It must have been a car or a motor-
cyclist. I hope to God they don’t have any armoured cars come
up or any tanks. Go on. Put it in just as fast as you can and wedge
it tight and lash it fast. You’re shaking, like a Goddamn woman.
What the hell is the matter with you? You’re trying to do it too
fast. I’ll bet that Goddamn woman up above isn’t shaking. That
Pilar. Maybe she is too. She sounds as though she were in plenty
trouble. She’ll shake if she gets in enough. Like everybody bloody
else.

410

He leaned out and up and Into the sunlight’ and as he reached
his hand up to take what Anselmo handed him, his head now
above the noise of the failing water, the firing Increased sharply
up the road, and then the noise of grenades again. Then more
grenades,

‘They’ve rushed the sawmill then.’

It’s lucky I’ve got this stuff in blocks, he thought. Instead of
sticks. What the hell. It’s just neater. Although a lousy canvas
sack full of jelly would be quicker. Two sacks. No. One of that
would do. And if we just had detonators and the old exploder.
That son of a bitch threw my exploder in the river. That old box
and the places that it’s been. In this river he threw it. That bastard
Pablo. He gave them hell there below just now. ‘Give me some
more of that, vie jo. 9

The old man’s doing very well. He’s in quite a place up there.
He hated to shoot that sentry. So did I but I didn’t think about it.
Nor do I think about it now. You have to (Jo that. But then
Anselmo got a cripple. I know about cripples. I think that killing
a man with an automatic weapon makes it easier. I mean on the
one doing it. It is different. After the first touch it is it that does
it. Not you. Save that to go into some other time. You and your
head. You have a nice thinking head, old Jordan. Roll, Jordan.
Roll ! They used to yell that at football when you lugged the ball.
Do you know the damned Jordan is really not much bigger than
that creek down there below. At the source, you mean. So is any-
thing else at the source. This is a place here under this bridge. A
home away from home. Come on Jordan, puli yourself together.
This is serious, Jordan. Don’t you understand? Serious. It’s less
so all the time,. Look at that other side. Para qu£? I’m all right
now however she goes. As Maine goes so goes the nation. As
Jordan goes so go the bloody Israelites. The bridge, I mean. As
Jordan goes, so goes the bloody bridge, other way round, really.

‘Give me some more of that, Anselmo, old boy,’ he said. The
old man nodded, ‘Almost through,’ Robert Jordan said. The old
man nodded again.

Finishing wiring the grenades down, he no longer heard the
firing from up the road. Suddenly he was working only with the
noise of the stream. He looked down and saw it boiling up white
below him through the boulders and then dropping down to a
clear pebbled pool where one of the wedges he had dropped
411

swung around in the current. As he looked a trout rose for some
insect and made a circle on the surface close to where the chip
was turning. As he twisted the wire tight with the pliers that held
these two grenades in place, he saw, through the metal of the
bridge, the sunlight on the green slope of the mountain. It was
brown three days ago, he thought.

Out from the cool dark under the bridge he leaned into the
bright sun and shouted to Anselm o’s bending face, ‘Give me the
big coil of wire.*

The old man handed it down.

For God’s sake don’t loosen them any yet. This will pull
them. I wish you could string them through. But with the length
wire you are using it’s O.K. Robert Jordan thought as he felt the
cotter pins that held the rings that would release the levers on
the hand grenades. He checked that the grenades, lashed on their
sides, had room for the levers to spring when the pins were pulled
(the wire that lashgd them ran through under the levers), then he
attached a length of wire to one ring, wired it on to the main wire
that ran to the ring of the outside grenade, paid off some slack
from the coil, and passed it around a steel brace and then handed
the coil up to Anselmo. ‘Hold it carefully,’ he said.

He climbed up on to the bridge, took the coils from the old
man and walked back as fast as he could pay out wire toward
where the sentry was slumped in the road, leaning over the side
of the bridge and paying out wire from the coil as he walked.

‘Bring the sacks,’ he shouted to Anselmo as he walked back-
wards. As he passed he stooped down and picked up the sub-
, machine gun and slung it over his shoulder again.

* It was then, looking up from paying out wire, tha£ he saw, well
up the road, those who were coming back from the upper post.

There were four of them, he saw, and then he had to watch his
wire so it would be clear and not foul against any of the outer
work of the bridge. Eladio was not with them.

Robert Jordan carried the wire clear past the end of the bridge,
took a loop around the last stanchion and then ran along the road
until he stopped beside a stone marker. He cut the *wire and
handed it to Anselmo.

‘Hold this, viejo ,* he said. ‘Now walk back with me to the
bridge. Take up on it as you walk. No. I will.*

At the bridge he pulled the wire back out through the hitch so
412

it now ran clear and unfouled to the grenade rings and handed it,
stretching alongside the bridge, but running quite clear, to An-
selmo.

‘Take this back to that high stone,’ he said. ‘Hold it easily but
firmly. Do not put any force on it. When thou pullest hard, hard,
the bridge will blow. jComprendes ?’

‘Yes.’

‘Treat it softly but do not let it sag so it would foul. Keep it
lightly firm but not pulling until thou pullest. iComprendes ? f

‘Yes.’

‘When thou pullest really pull. Do not jerk.’

Robert Jordan while he spoke was looking up the road at the
remainder of Pilar’s band. They were close now and he saw
Primitivo and Rafael were supporting Fernando. He looked to
be shot through the groin for he was holding himself there with
both hands while the man and the boy held him on either side.
His right leg was dragging, the side of the shoe scraping on the
road as they walked him. Pilar was climbing the bank into the
timber carrying three rifles. Robert Jordan could not see her face
but her head was up and she was climbing as fast as she could.

‘How does it go?’ Primitivo called.

‘Good. We’re almost finished,’ Robert Jordan shouted back.

There was no need to ask how it went with them. As he looked
away the three were on the edge of the road and Fernando was
shaking his head as they tried to get him up the bank.

‘Give me a rifle here,’ Robert Jordan heard him say in a choky
voice.

‘No, hombre. We will get thee to the horses.’

‘What would I do with a horse?’ Fernando said. T am very
well here.’

Robert Jordan did not hear the rest for he was speaking to
Anselmo.

‘Blow it if tanks come/ he said. ‘But only if they come on to it.
Blow it if armoured cars come. If they come on to it. Anything
else Pablo will stop/

T will nof blow it with thee beneath it/

‘Take no account of me. Blow it if thou needest to. I fix the
other wire and come back. Then we will blow it together/

He started running for the centre of the bridge.

Anselmo saw Robert Jordan run up the bridge, coil of wir^over

413

his arm, pliers hanging from one wrist and the sub-machine gun
slung over his back. He saw him climb down under the rail of the
bridge and out of sight. Anselmo held the wire in his hand, his
right hand, and he crouched behind the stone marker and looked
down the road and across the bridge. Halfway between him and
the bridge was the sentry, who had setded now closer to the road,
sinking closer on to the smooth road surface as the sun weighed
on his back. His rifle, lying on the road, the bayonet fixed, pointed
straight toward Anselmo. The old man looked past him along the
surface of the bridge crossed by the shadows of the bridge rail to
where the road swung to the left along the gorge and then turhed
out of sight behind the rocky wall. He looked at the far sentry
box with the sun shining on it and then, conscious of the wire in
his hand, he turned his head to where Fernando was speaking to
Primitivo and the gipsy.

‘Leave me here,’ Fernando said. ‘It hurts much and there is
much haemorrhage inside. I feel it in the inside when I move.’

‘Let us get thee up the slope,’ Primitivo said. ‘Put thy arms
around our shoulders and we will take thy legs.’

‘It is inutile ,’ Fernando said. ‘Put me here behind a stone. I am
as useful here as above.’

‘But when we go,’ Primitivo said.

‘Leave me here,’ Fernando said. ‘There is no question of my
travelling with this. Thus it gives one horse more. I am very well
here. Certainly they will come soon.’

‘We can take thee up the hill,’ the gipsy said. ‘Easily.’

He was, naturally, in a deadly hurry to be gone, as was Primi-
tivo. But they had brought him thus far.

‘Nay,’ Fernando said. ‘I am very well here. What passes with
Eladio?’

The gipsy put his finger on his head to show where the wound
. had been.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘After thee. When we made the rush.’

‘Leave me,’ Fernando said. Anselmo could see he was suffer-
ing much. He held both hands against his groin now and put his
head back against the bank, his legs straight out before him. His
face was grey and sweating.

‘Leave me now please, for a favour,’ he said. His eyes were shut
with pain, the edges of the lips twitching. ‘I find myself very well
here/

‘Here is a rifle and cartridges/ Primitive* said.

‘Is it mine?’ Fernando asked, his eyes shut.

‘Nay, the Pilar has thine, 9 Primitivo said. ‘This is mine. 9

‘I would prefer my own, 9 Fernando said. T am more accus-
tomed to it. 9

‘I will bring it to thee, 9 the gipsy lied to him. ‘Keep this until it
comes. 9

‘I am in a very good position here, 9 Fernando said. ‘Both for
up the road and for the bridge. 9 He opened his eves, turned his
head, and looked across the bridge, then shut them as the pain
came.

The gipsy tapped his head and motioned with his thumb to
Primitivo for them to be off.

‘Then we will be down for thee, 9 Primitivo said and started up
the slope after the gipsy, who was climbing fast.

Fernando lay back against the bank. In front of him was one of
the whitewashed stones that marked the edge of the road. His
head was in the shadow but the sun shone on his plugged and
bandaged wound and on his hands that were cupped over it. His
legs and his feet also were in the sun. The rifle lay beside him and
there were three clips of cartridges shining in the sun beside the
rifle. A fly crawled on his hands but the small tickling did not
come through the pain.

‘Fernando ! 9 Anselmo called to him from where he crouched,
holding the wire. He had made a loop in the end of the wire and
twisted it close so he could hold it in his fist.

‘Fernando !* he called again.

Fernando opened his eyes and looked at him.

‘How does it go? 9 Fernando asked.

‘Very good, 9 Anselmo said. ‘Now in a minute we will be blow-
ing it. 9

*1 am pleased. Anything you need me for advise me, 9 Fernando
said and shut his eyes again and the pain lurched in him.

Anselmo looked away from him and out on to the bridge.

He was watching for the first sight of the coil of wire being
handed upon to the bridge and for the Ingles ' s sunburnt head
and face to follow it as he would pull himself up the side. At the
same time he was watching beyond the bridge for anything to
come around the far corner of the road. He did not fed afraid
now at all and he had not been afraid all the day. It goes fto fast

4i5

and it is so normal, he thought. I hated the shooting of the guard
and it made me an emotion but that is passed now. How could
the Ingles say that the shooting of a man is like the shooting of an
animal? In all hunting I have had an elation and no feeling of
wrong. But to shoot a man gives a feeling as though one had
struck one’s own brother when you are grown men. And to shoot
him various times to kill him. Nay, do not think of that. That
gave thee too much emotion and thee ran blubbering down the
bridge like a woman.

That is over, he told himself, and thou canst try to atone for it
as for the others. But now thou hast what thou asked for last
night coming home across the hills. Thou art in battle and thou
hast no problem. If I die on this morning now it is all right.

Then he looked at Fernando lying there against the bank with
his hands cupped over the groove of his hip, his lips blue, his eyes
tight shut, breathing heavily and slowly, and he thought, If I die
may it be quickly. Nay I said I would ask nothing more if I were
granted what I needed for to-day. So I will not ask. Understand?

I ask nothing. Nothing in any way. Give me what I asked for and
I leave all the rest according to discretion.

He listened to the noise that came, far away, of the battle at the
pass and he said to himself. Truly this is a great day. I should
realize and know what a day this is.

But there was no lift or any excitement in his heart. That was
all gone and there was nothing but a calmness. And now, as he
crouched behind the marker stone with the looped wire in his
hand and another loop of it around his wrist and the gravel beside
the road under his knees he was not lonely nor did he feel in any
way alone. He was one with the wire in his hand and one with
the bridge, and one with the charges the IngUs had placed. He
was one with the IngUs still working under the bridge and he
was one with all of the batde and with the Republic.

But there was no excitement. It was all calm now and the sun
beat down on his neck and on his shoulders as he crouched and
as he looked up he saw the high, cloudless sky and the slope of
the mountain rising beyond the river and he was not happy but
he was neither lonely nor afraid.

Up the hill slope Pilar lay behind a tree watching the road that
came down from the pass. She had three loaded rifles by her and
she handed one to Primitivo as he dropped down beside her.

416

‘Get down there/ she said. ‘Behind that tree. Thou, gipsy, over
there/ she pointed to another tree below. ‘Is he dead?*

‘Nay. Not yet/ Primitivo said.

‘It was bad luck/ Pilar said. ‘If we had had two more it need
not have happened. He should have crawled around the sawdust
pile. Is he all right there where he isr*

Primitivo shook his head.

‘When the Ingles blows the bridge will fragments come this
far?* the gipsy asked from behind his tree.

‘I don’t know/ Pilar said. ‘But Agustin with the m&quina is
closer than thee. The Ingles ■would not have placed him there if
it were too close.’

‘But I remember with the blowing of the train the lamp of the
engine blew by over my head and pieces of steel flew by like
swallows/

‘Thou hast poetic memories/ Pilar said. ‘Like swallows. / Joderl
They were like wash boilers. Listen, gipsy, thou hast comported
thyself well to-day. Now do not let thy fear catch up with thee/

‘Well, I only asked if it would blow this far so I might keep
well behind the tree trunk/ the gipsy said.

‘Keep it thus/ Pilar told him. ‘How many have we killed?’

*Pues five for us. Two here. Canst thou not see the other at the
far end? Look there toward the bridge. See the box? Look ! dost
see?’ He pointed. ‘Then there were eight below for Pablo. I
watched that post for the Ingles /

Pilar grunted. Then she said violently and raging. ‘What passes
with that Ingles ? What is he obscenitying off under that bridge?
jVaya mandanga! Is he building a bridge or blowing one?’

She raised her head and looked down at Anselm o crouched
behind the stone marker.

‘Hey, vie jo !* she shouted. ‘What passes with thy obscenity of
an Ingles ?*

‘Patience, woman/ Anselmo called up, holding the wire lighdy
but firmly. ‘He is terminating his work.’

‘But what in the name of the great whore does he take so much
time about?’

*jEs muy concienzudoV Anselmo shouted. ‘It is a scientific
labour/

‘I obscenity in the milk of science/ Pilar raged to the gipsy. ‘Let
the filth-faced obscenity blow it and be done. Maria V she shouted

4*7

in her deep voice up the hill. ‘Thy Ingles ~ and she shouted a
flood of obscenity about Jordan’s imaginary actions under the
bridge.

‘Calm yourself, woman,’ Anselmo called from the road. ‘He is
doing an enormous work. He is finishing it now.’

‘The hell with it,’ Pilar raged. ‘It is speed that counts.’

Just then they all heard firing start down the road where Pablo
was holding the post he had taken. Pilar stopped cursing and
listened. * Ay,’ she said. ‘Ayee, Ayee. That’s it.’

Robert Jordan heard it as he swung the coil of wire up on to the
bridge with one hand and then pulled himself up after it. As his
knees rested on the edge of the iron of the bridge and his hands
were on the surface he heard the machine gun firing around the
bend below. It was a different sound from Pablo’s automatic rifle.
He got to his feet, leaned over, passed his ‘coil of wire clear, and
commenced to pay out wire as he walked backwards and side-
ways along the bridge.

He heard the firing and as he walked he felt it in the pit of his
stomach as though it echoed on his own diaphragm. It was closer
now as he walked and he looked back at the bend of the road.
But it was still clear of any car, or tank, or men. It was still clear
when he was half-way to the end of the bridge. It was still clear
when he was three-quarters of the way, his wire running clear
and unfouled, and it was still clear as he climbed around behind
the sentry box, holding his wire out to keep it from catching on
the iron work. Then he was on the road and it was still clear
below on the road and then he was moving fast backwards up the
little washed out gully by the lower side of the road as an out-
fielder goes backwards for a long fly ball, keeping the wire taut,
and now he was almost opposite Anselmo’s stone, and it was still
clear below the bridge.

Then he heard the truck coming down the road and he saw it
over his shoulder just coming on to the long slope and he swung
his wrist once around the wire and yelled to Anselmo. ‘Blow her !’
and he dug his heels in and leaned back hard on to the tension of
the wire with a turn of it around his wrist and the noise of the
truck was coming behind and ahead there was the road with the
dead sentry and the long bridge and the stretch of road below, still
clear and then there was a cracking roar and the middle of the
bridge rose up in the air like a wave breaking and he felt the blast
418

from the explosion roll back against him as he dived on to his face
in the pebbly gully with his hands holding tight over his head.
His face was down against the pebbles as the bridge setded where
it had risen and the familiar yellow smell of it rolled over him in
acrid smoke and then it commenced to rain pieces of steel.

After the steel stopped falling he was still alive and he raised
his head and looked across the bridge. The centre section of it was
gone. There were jagged pieces of steel on the bridge with their
bright, new-torn edges and ends and these were all over the road.
The truck had stopped up the road about a hundred yards. The
driver and the two men who had been with him were running
toward a culvert.

Fernando was still lying against the bank and he was still
breathing. His arms straight by his sides, his hands relaxed.

Anselmo lay face down behind the white marking stone. His
left arm was doubled under his head and his right arm was
stretched straight out. The loop of wire was still around his right
fist. Robert Jordan got to his feet, crossed the road, knelt by him,
and made sure that he was dead. He did not turn him over to see
what the piece of steel had done. He was dead and that was all.

He looked very small, dead, Robert Jordan thought. He looked
small and grey-headed and Robert Jordan thought, I wonder how
he ever carried such big loads if that is the size he really was.
Then he saw the shape of the calves and the thighs in the tight,
grey herdsman’s breeches, and the worn soles of the rope-soied
shoes and he picked up Anselmo’s carbine and the, two sacks,
practically empty now and went over and picked up the rifle that
lay beside Fernando. He kicked a jagged piece of steel off the
surface of the road. Then he swung the two rifles over his shoul-
der, holding them by the muzzles, and started up the slope into
the timber. He did not look back nor did he even look across the
bridge at the road. They were still firing around the bend below
but he cared nothing about that now.

He was coughing from the TNT fumes and he felt numb all
through himself.

He put one of the rifles down by Pilar where she lay behind the
tree. She looked and saw that made three rifles that she had again.

‘You are too high up here,’ he said. ‘There’s a truck up the road
where you can’t see it. They thought it was planes. You better get
farther down. Fm going down with Agustm to cover Pablo.’

419

‘The old one?* she asked him, looking at his face.

‘Dead/

He coughed again, wrackingly, and spat on the ground.

‘Thy bridge is blown, Ingles ,’ Pilar looked at him. ‘Don't for-
get that.’

T don’t forget anything,’ he said. ‘You have a big voice,’ he said
to Pilar. ‘I have heard thee bellow. Shout up to the Maria and tell
her that I am all right.’

‘We lost two at the sawmill,’ Pilar said, trying to make him
understand.

‘So I saw,* Robert Jordan said. ‘Did you do something stupid?’

‘Go and obscenity thyself, Ingles Pilar said, ‘Fernando and
Eladio were men, too.’

‘Why don’t you go up with the horses?’ Robert Jordan said. ‘I
can cover here better than thee.’

‘Thou art to cover Pablo.’

‘The hell with Pablo. Let him cover himself with mierda .’

‘Nay, Ingles . He came back. He had fought much below there.
Thou hast not listened? He is fighting now. Against something
bad. Do you not hear?’

‘I’ll cover him. Rut obscenity all of you. Thou and Pablo
both.’

‘ IngUs ,’ Pilar said. ‘Calm thyself. I have been with thee in this
as no one could be. Pablo did thee a wrong but he returned.’

‘If I had had the exploder the old man would not have been
killed. I could have blown it from here.’

‘If, if, if -’ Pilar said.

The anger and the emptiness and the hate that had come with
the let-down after the bridge, when he had looked up from where
he had lain and crouching, seen Anselmo dead, were still all
through him. ' In him, too, was despair from the sorrow that
soldiers turn to hatred in order that they may continue to be
soldiers. Now it was over he was lonely, detached, and unelated
and he hated everyone he saw.

‘If there had been no snow Pilar said. And then, not sud-
denly, as a physical release could have been (if the woman would
have put her arm around him, say) but slowly and from his head
he began to accept it and let the hate go out. Sure, the snow. That
had done it. The snow. Done it to others. Once you saw it again
as it was to others, once you got rid of your own self, the always
420

ridding o£ self that you had to do in war. Where there could be
no self. Where yourself is only to be lost. Then, from his losing of
it, he heard Pilar say, ‘Sordo
‘What?’ he said.

‘Sordo — *

‘Yes,’ Robert Jordan said. He grinned at her, a cracked, stiff,
too-tightened-facial-tendoned grin. ‘Forget it. I was wrong. 1 am
sorry, woman. Let us do this well and all together. And the bridge
is blown, as thou sayest.’

‘Yes. Thou must think of things in their place.*

‘Then I go now to Agustin. Put thy gipsy much farther down
so that he can see well up the road. Give those guns to Primitivo
and take this maquina. Let me show thee.*

‘Keep the tnaquinciy Pilar said. ‘We will not be here any time.
Pablo should come now and we will be going.*

‘Rafael,* Robert Jordan said, ‘come down here with me. Here.
Good. See those coming out of the culvert. There, above the
truck? Coming toward the truck? Hit me one of those. Sit. Take
it easy.’

The gipsy aimed carefully and fired and as he jerked the bolt
back and ejected the shell Robert Jordan said, ‘Over. You threw
against the rock above. See the rock dust? Lower, by two feet.
Now, careful. They’re running. Good. Sigue tirando

‘I got one,* the gipsy said. The man was down in the road half-
way between the culvert and the truck. The other two did not
stop to drag him. They ran for the culvert and ducked in.

‘Don’t shoot at him,* Robert Jordan said. ‘Shoot for the top
part of a front tyre on the truck. So if you miss you’ll hit the
engine. Good.’ He watched with the glasses. ‘A little lower.
Good. You shoot like hell. jMuchol jMuchol Shoot me the top
of the radiator. Anywhere on the radiator. Thou are a champion.
Look. Don’t let anything come past that point there. See?’

‘Watch me break the windshield in the truck,* the gipsy said
happily.

‘Nay. The truck is already sick,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Hold thy
fire until anything comes down the road. Start firing when it is
opposite the culvert. Try to hit the driver. That you all should
fire, then,’ he spoke to Pilar who had come farther down the slope
with Primitivo. ‘You are wonderfully placed here. See how that
steepness guards thy flank?*

421

‘That you should get about thy business with Agusfin/ Pilar
said. ‘Desist from thy lecture. I have seen terrain in my time.*

‘Put Primitivo farther up there/ Robert Jordan said. ‘There,
see, man? This side of where the bank steepens.’

‘Leave me/ said Pilar. ‘Get along, Ingles. Thou and thy perfec-
tion. Here there is no problem.’

Just then they heard the planes.

Maria had been with the horses for a long time, but they were no
comfort to her. Nor was she any to them. From where she was in
the forest she could not see the road nor could she see the bridge,
and when the firing started she put her arm around the neck of
the big white-faced bay stallion that she had gentled and brought
gifts to many times when the horses had been in the corral in the
trees below the camp. But her nervousness made the big stallion
nervous too, and he jerked his head, his nostrils widening at the
firing and the noise of the bombs. Maria could not keep still and
she walked around patting and gentling the horses and making
them all more nervous and agitated.

She tried to think of the firing not as just a terrible thing that
was happening, but to realize that it was Pablo below with the
new men, and Pilar with the others above, and that she must not
worry nor get into a panic but must have confidence in Roberto.
But she could not do this and all the firing above and below the
bridge and the distant sound of the battle that rolled down from
the pass like the noise of a far-off storm with a dried, rolling ratde
in it and the irregular beat of the bombs was simply a horrible
thing that almost kept her from breathing.

Then later she heard Pilar’s big voice from away below on the
hillside shouting up some obscenity to her that she could not
understand and she thought, Oh, God, no, no. Don’t talk like
that with him in peril. Don’t offend anyone and make useless
risks. Don’t give any provocation.

Then she commenced to pray for Roberto quickly and auto-
matically as she had done at school, saying the prayers as fast as
she could and counting them on the fingers of her left hand,
praying by tens of each of the two prayers she was repeating.
Then the Dridge blew and one horse snapped his halter when he
rose and jerked his head at the cracking roar and he went off
through the trees. Maria caught him finally and brought him
422

back shivering, trembling, his chest dark with sweat, the saddle
down, and coming back through the trees she heard shooting
below and she thought, I cannot stand this longer. I cannot live
not knowing any longer. I cannot breathe and my mouth is so
dry. And I am afraid and I am no good and I frighten the horses
and only caught this horse by hazard because he knocked the
saddle down against a tree and caught himself kicking into the
stirrups and now as I get the saddle up, Oh, God, I do not know.

I cannot bear it. Oh please have him be all right for ail my heart
and all of me is at the bridge. The Republic is one thing and we
must win is another thing. Rut, Oh, Sweet Blessed Virgin, bring
him back to me from the bridge and I will do anything thou
sayest ever. Because I am not here. There isn’t any me. I am only
with him. Take care of him for me and that will be me and then
I will do the things for thee and he will not mind. Nor will it be
against the Republic. Oh, please forgive me for I am very con-
fused. I am too confused now. But if thou takest care of him I
will do whatever is right. I will do what he says and what you
say. With the two of me I will do it. But this now not knowing I
cannot endure.

Then, the horse tied again, she with the saddle up now, the
blanket smoothed, hauling tight on the cinch she heard the big,
deep voice from the timber below, ‘Maria ! Maria ! Thy Ingles is
all right. Hear me? All right. ; Sin Novedad f*

Maria held the saddle with both hands and pressed her cropped
head hard against it and cried. She heard the deep voice shouting
again and she turned from the saddle and shouted, choking, ‘Yes !
Thank you P Then, choking again, ‘Thank you ! Thank you very
much P

When they heard the planes they all looked up and the planes
were coming from Segovia very high in the sky, silvery in the
high sky, their drumming rising over all the other sounds.

‘Those P Pilar said. ‘There has only lacked those I s

Robert Jordan put his arm on her shoulders as he watched
them. ‘Nay, woman/ he said. ‘Those do not come for us. Those
have no time for us. Calm thyself/

‘I hate them/

‘Me too. But now I must go to Agustin/

He circled the hillside through the pines and all the time there
4^3 '

was the throbbing, drumming o£ the planes and across the
shattered bridge on the road below, around the bend of the road
there was the intermittent hammering fire of a heavy machine
gun.

Robert Jordan dropped down to where Agustm lay in the
clump of scrub pines behind the automatic rifle and more planes
were coming all the time.

‘What passes below?* Agustm said. ‘What is Pablo doing?
Doesn’t he know the bridge is gone?*

‘Maybe he can’t leave.*

‘Then let us leave. The hell with him.*

‘He will come now if he is able,* Robert Jordan said, ‘We
should see him now.*

‘I have not heard him,* Agustin said. ‘Not for five minutes.
No. There ! Listen ! There he is. That’s him.’

There was a burst of the spot-spot-spotting fire of the cavalry
sub-machine gun, then another, then another.

‘That’s the bastard,* Robert Jordan said.

He watched still more planes coming over in the high cloudless
blue sky and he watched Agustm’s face as he looked up at them.
Then he looked down at the shattered bridge and across to the
stretch of road which still was clear. He coughed and spat and
listened to the heavy machine gun hammer again below the bend.
It sounded to be in the same place that it was before.

‘And what’s that?’ Agustm asked. ‘What the unnameable is
that?’

‘It has been going since before I blew the bridge,’ Robert Jor-
dan said. He looked down at the bridge now and he could see the
stream through the torn gap where the centre had fallen, hanging
like a bent steel apron. He heard the first of the planes that Had
gone over now bombing up above at the pass and more were still
coming. The noise of their motors filled all the high sky and
looking up he saw their pursuit, minute and tiny, circling and
wheeling high above them.

‘I don’t think they ever crossed the lines the other morning,’
Primitivo said. ‘They must have swung off to the west and then
come back. They could not be making an attack if they had seen
these.’

‘Most of these are new,* Robert Jordan said.

He had the feeling of something that had started normally and
424

had then brought great, outsized, giant repercussions. It was as
though you had thrown a stone and the stone made a ripple and
the ripple returned roaring and toppling as a tidal wave. Or as
though you shouted and the echo came back in rolls and peals of
thunder, and the thunder was deadly. Or as though you struck
one man and he fell and as far as you could see other men rose
up all armed and armoured. He was glad he was not with Golz
up at the pass.

Lying there, by Agustln, watching the planes going over, listen-
ing for firing behind him, watching the road below where he
knew he would see something but not what it would be, he still
felt numb with surprise that he had not been killed at the bridge.
He had accepted being killed so completely that all of this now
seemed unreal. Shake out of that, he said to himself. Get rid of
that. There is much, much, much to be done to-day. But it would
not leave him and he felt, consciously, all of this becoming like a
dream.

‘You swallowed too much of that smoke/ he told himself. But
he knew it was not that. He could feel, solidly, how unreal it all
was through the absolute reality and he looked down at the
bridge and then back to the sentry lying on the road, to where
Anselmo lay, to Fernando against the bank and back up the
smooth, brown road to the stalled truck and still it was unreal.

‘You better sell out your part of you quickly,’ he told himself.
‘You’re like one of those cocks in the pit where nobody has seen
tlje wound given and it doesn’t show and he is already going cold
with it.’

‘Nuts,’ he said to himself. ‘You are a little groggy that is all,
and you have a let-down after responsibility, that is all. Take it
easy.’

Then Agustfn grabbed his arm and pointed and he looked
across the gorge and saw Pablo.

They saw Pablo come running around the corner of the bend
in the road. At the sheer rock where the road went out of sight
they saw him stop and lean against the rock and fire back up the
road. Robert Jordan saw Pablo, short, heavy, and stocky, his cap
gone, leaning against the rock wall and firing the short cavalry
automatic rifle, and he could see the bright flicker of the cascading
brass hulls as the sun caught them. They saw Pablo crouch and
fire another burst. Then, without looking back, he came running,
425

short, bow-legged, fast, his head bent down straight toward the
bridge,

Robert Jordan had pushed Agustm over and he had the stock
of the big automatic rifle against his shoulder and was sighting
on the bend of the road. His own sub-machine gun lay by his left
hand. It was not accurate enough for that range.

As Pablo came toward them Robert Jordan sighted on the bend
but nothing came. Pablo had reached the bridge, looked over his
shoulder once, glanced at the bridge, and then turned to his left
and gone down into the gorge and out of sight. Robert Jordan
was still watching the bend and nothing had come in sight.
Agustm got up on one knee. He could see Pablo climbing down
into the gorge like a goat. There had been no noise of bring below
since they had first seen Pablo.

‘You see anything up above? On the rocks above?’ Robert
Jordan asked.

‘Nothing.’

Robert Jordan watched the bend of the road. He knew the wall
just below that was too steep for anyone to climb but below it
pased and someone might have circled up above.

If things had been unreal before, they were suddenly real
enough now. It was as though a reflex lens camera had been sud-
denly brought into focus. It was then he saw the low-bodied,
angled snout, and squat green, grey, and brown-splashed turret
with the projecting machine gun come around the bend into the
bright sun. He fired on it and he could hear the spang against the
steel. The little whippet tank scuttled back behind the rock wall.
Watching the corner, Robert Jordan saw the nose just reappear,
then the edge of the turret showed, and the turret swung so that
the gun was pointing down the road.

‘It seems like a mouse coming out of his hole,* Agustm said.
‘Look, Ingles . 9

‘He has little confidence,’ Robert Jordan said.

‘This is the big insect Pablo has been fighting,’ Agustm said.
‘Hit him again, Ingles *

‘Nay. I cannot hurt him. I don’t want him to see where we are.’

The tai^k commenced to fire down the road. The bullets hit the
road surface and sung off and now they were pinging and clang-
ing in the iron of the bridge. It was the same machine gun they
had heard- below.

426

i said. ‘Is that the famous tanks, Ingles ?*

‘That’s a baby one.’

‘ Cabron . If I had a baby bottle full of gasoline I would climb
up there and set fire to him. What will he do, Ingle sV

‘After a while he will have another look.’

‘And these are what men fear,’ Agustin said. ‘Look, IngUs !
He’s rekilling the sentries.’

, ‘Since he has no other target,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Do not re-
proach him.’

But he was thinking, Sure, make fun of him. But suppose it
was you, way back here in your own country and they held you
up with firing on the main road. Then a bridge was blown.
Wouldn’t you think it was mined ahead or that there was a trap?
Sure you would. He’s done all right. He’s waiting for something
else to come up. He’s engaging the enemy. It’s only us. But he
can’t tell that. Look at the little bastard.

The little tank had nosed a little farther around the corner.

Just then Agustm saw Pablo coming over the edge of the gorge,
pulling himself over on hands and knees, his bristly face running
with sweat.

‘Here comes the son of a bitch,’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘Pablo.’

Robert Jordan looked, saw Pablo, and then he commenced fir-
ing at the part of the camouflaged turret of the tank where he
kpew the slit above the machine gun would be. The little tank
whirred backwards, scutding out of sight, and Robert Jordan
picked up the automatic rifle, clamped the tripod against the
barrel, and swung the gun with its still hot muzzle over his
shoulder. The muzzle was so hot it burned his shoulder and he
shoved it far behind him, turning the stock flat in his hand.

‘Bring the sack of pans and my litde maquina he shouted,
‘and come running.’

Robert Jordan ran up the hill through the pines. Agustin was
close behind him and behind him Pablo was coming.

‘Pilar!’ Jordan shouted across the hill. ‘Come on, woman!*

The three of them were going as fast as they could up the steep
slope. They could not run any more because the grade was too
severe and Pablo, who had no load but the light cavalry sub-
machine gun, had closed up with the other two.

427

‘And thy people? 5 Agustin said to Pablo out of his dry
mouth.

‘All dead, 5 Pablo said. He was almost unable to breathe.
Agustin turned his head and looked at him.

‘We have plenty of horses now, Ingles / Pablo panted.

‘Good/ Robert Jordan said. The murderous bastard, he
thought. ‘What did you encounter? 5

‘Everything,’ Pablo said. He was breathing in lunges. ‘What
passed with Pilar? 5

‘She lost Fernando and the brother —

‘Eladio,’ Agustin said.

‘And thou?’ Pablo asked.

‘I lost Anselmo. 5

‘There are lots of horses, 5 Pablo said. ‘Even for the baggage. 5

Agustin bit his lip, looked at Robert Jordan, and shook his
head. Below them, out of sight through the trees, they heard the
tank firing on the road and bridge again.

Robert Jordan jerked his head. ‘What passed with that? 5 he
said to Pablo. He did not like to look at Pablo, nor to smell him,
but he wanted to hear him.

*1 could not leave with that there, 5 Pablo said. ‘We were barri-
caded at the lower bend of the post. Finally it went back to look
for something and I came. 5

‘What were you shooting at, at the bend?’ Agustin asked
bluntly.

Pablo looked at him, started to grin, thought better of it, and
said nothing.

‘Did you shoot them all? 5 Agustin asked. Robert Jordan was
thinking, keep your mouth shut. It is none of your business now.
They have done all that you could expect and more. This is an
inter-tribal matter. Don’t make moral judgements. What do you
expect from a murderer? You’re working with a murderer. Keep
your mouth shut. You knew enough about him before. This is
nothing new. But you dirty bastard, he thought. You dirty, rotten
bastard.

His chest was aching with the climbing as though it would
split after the running and ahead now through the trees he saw
the horses.

‘Go ahead/ Agustin was saying. ‘Why do you not say you shot
them’? 5

‘Shut up,’ Pablo said. ‘I have fought much to-day and well.
Ask the Ingles

‘And now get us through to-day/ Robert Jordan said. ‘For it is
thee who has the plan for this.’

‘I have a good plan/ Pablo said. ‘With a little luck we will be
all right.’

He was beginning to breathe better.

‘You’re not going to kill any of us, are your’ Agustfn said.
‘For I will kill thee now.’

‘Shut up/ Pablo said. ‘I have to look after thy interest and that
of the band. This is war. One cannot do what one would wish/

‘ Cabron / said Agustfn. ‘You take all the prizes.’

‘Tell me what thou encountered below'/ Robert Jordan said to
Pablo.

‘Everything/ Pablo repeated. He was still breathing as though
it were tearing his chest but he could talk steadily now and his
face and head were running with sweat and his shoulders and
chest were soaked with it. He looked at Robert Jordan cautiously
to see if he were really friendly and then he grinned. ‘Everything/
he said again. ‘First we took the post. Then came a motor-cyclist.
Then another. Then an ambulance. Then a camion. Then the
tank. Just before thou didst the bridge.’

‘Then — ’

‘The tank could not hurt us but we could not leave for it com-
manded the road. Then it went away and I came.’

‘And thy people?’ Agustfn put in, still looking for trouble.

‘Shut up/ Pablo looked at him squarely, and his face was the
face of a man who had fought well before any other thing had
happened. ‘They were not of our band/

Now they could see the horses tied to the trees, the sun coming
down on them through the pine branches and them tossing their
heads and kicking against the botflies and Robert Jordan saw
Maria and the next thing he was holding her tight, tight with the
automatic rifle leaning against his side, the flash-cone pressing
against his ribs, and Maria saying, ‘Thou, Roberto. Oh, thou.’

‘Yes, rabbit. My good, good rabbit. Now we go.’

‘Art thou here truly?’

‘Yes. Yes. Truly. Oh, thou !’

He had never thought that you could know that there was a
woman if there was battle; nor that any part of you could know
429

it* or respond to it ! nor that i£ there was a woman that she should
have breasts small, round, and tight against you through a shirt;
nor that they, the breasts, could know about the two of them in
battle. But it was true and he thought, good. That s good. I would
not have believed that and he held her to him once hard, hard,
but he did not look at her, and then he slapped her where he
never had slapped her, and said, ‘Mount. Mount. Get on that
saddle, guapa.’

Then they were untying the halters and Robert Jordan had ■
given the automatic rifle back to Agustin and slung his own sub-
machine gun over his back, and he was putting bombs out of his
pockets into the saddlebags, and he stuffed one empty pack inside
the other and tied that one behind his saddle. Then Pilar came
up, so breathless from the climb she could not talk, but only
motioned.

Then Pablo stuffed three hobbles he had in his hand into a
saddle-bag, stood up, and said, 'Qui tal, woman?’ and she only
nodded, and then they were all mounting.

Robert Jordan was on the big grey he had first seen in the snow
of the morning of the day before and he felt that it was much
horse between his legs and under his hands. He was wearing
rope-soled shoes and the stirrups were a little too short; his sub-
machine gun was slung over his shoulder, his pockets were full
of clips, and he was sitting reloading the one used clip, the reins
under one arm, tight, watching Pilar mount into a strange sort
of seat on top of the duffle lashed on to the saddle of the buckskin.

‘Cut that stuff loose for God’s sake,’ Primitivo said. ‘Thou wilt
fall and the horse cannot carry it.’

‘Shut up,’ said Pilar. ‘We go to make a life with this.’

‘Canst ride like that, woman?’ Pablo asked her from the
guardia-civil saddle on the great bay horse.

‘Like any milk-peddler,’ Pilar told him. ‘How do you go, old
one?’

‘Straight down. Across the road. Up the far slope and into the
wood where it narrows.’

‘Across the road?’ Agustin wheeled beside him, kicking his
soft-heeled, canvas shoes against the stiff, unresponding belly of
one of the horses Pablo had recruited in the night.

‘Yes, man. It is the only way,’ Pablo said. He handed him one
of the lead ropes. Primitivo and the gipsy had the others.

430

‘Thou canst come at the end if thou will, Ingles,’' Pablo said.
‘We cross high enough to be out of range of that mdquina . But
we will go separately and riding much and then be together where
it narrows above. 5

‘Good, 5 said Robert Jordan.

They rode down through the trees toward the edge of the road.
Robert Jordan rode just behind Maria. He could not ride beside
her for the trees. He caressed the grey once with his thigh muscles,
and then held him steady as they dropped down fast and sliding
through the pines, telling the grey with his thighs as they dropped
down what the spurs would have told him if they had been on
level ground.

‘Thou, 5 he said to Maria, ‘go second as they cross the road. First
is not so bad though it seems bad. Second is good. It is later that
they are always watching for/

‘But thou — 5

‘I will go suddenly. There will be no problem. It is the places
in line that are bad/

He was watching the round, bristly head of Pablo, sunk in his
shoulders as he rode, his automatic rifle slung o\er his shoulder.
He was watching Pilar, her head bare, her shoulders broad, her
knees higher than her thighs as her heels hooked into the bundles.
She looked back at him once and shook her head.

‘Pass the Pilar before you cross the road/ Robert Jordan said
to Maria.

Then he was looking through the thinning trees and he saw the
oiled dark of the road below and beyond it the green slope of the
hillside. We are above the culvert, he saw, and just below the
height where the road drops down straight toward the bridge in
that long sweep. We are around eight hundred yards above the
bridge. That is not out of range for the Fiat in that litde tank if
they have come up to the bridge.

‘Maria/ he said. ‘Pass the Pilar before we reach the road and
ride wide up that slope/

She looked back at him but did not say anything. He did not
look at her except to see that she had understood.

* jComprendes?’ he asked her.

She nodded.

‘Move up/ he said.

She shook her head.

43 1

‘Move up !*

‘Nay/ she told him, turning around and shaking her head. ‘I
go In the order that I am to go.’

Just then Pablo dug both his spurs into the big bay and he
plunged down the last pine-needled slope and crossed the road in
a pounding, sparking of shod hoofs. The others came behind
him and Robert Jordan saw them crossing the road and slamming
on up the green slope and heard the machine gun hammer at the
bridge. Then be heard a noise come sweeeish-crack-boom ! The
boom was a sharp crack that widened in the cracking and on the
hillside he saw a small fountain of earth rise with a plume of grey
smoke. Sweeeish-crack-boom ! It came again, the swishing like
the noise of a rocket and there was another up-pulsing of dirt and
smoke farther up the hillside.

Ahead of him the gipsy was stopped beside the road in the
shelter of the last trees. He looked ahead at the slope and then he
looked hack toward Robert Jordan.

‘Go ahead, Rafael,’ Robert Jordan said. ‘Gallop, man !’

The gipsy was holding the lead rope with the pack-horse pull-
ing his head taut behind him.

‘Drop the pack-horse and gallop P Robert Jordan said.

He saw the gipsy’s hand extended behind him rising higher
and higher, seeming to take for ever as his heels kicked into the
horse he was riding and the rope came taut, then dropped, and
he was across the road and Robert Jordan was knee-ing against a
frightened pack-horse that bumped back into him as the gipsy
crossed the hard, dark road and he heard his horse’s hoofs clump-
ing as he galloped up the slope.

Wheeeeeeish-ca-rack I The flat trajectory of the shell came and
he saw the gipsy jink like a running boar as the earth spouted the
little black and grey geyser ahead of him. He watched him gallop-
ing, slow and reaching now, up the long green slope and the gun
threw behind him and ahead of him and he was under the fold
of the hill with the others.

I can’t take the damned pack-horse, Robert Jordan thought.
Though I wish I could keep the son of a bitch on my off side. I’d
like to have him between me and that 47 mm. they’re throwing
with. By God, I’ll try to get him up there anyway.

He rode up to the pack-horse, caught hold of the hackamore,
and then, holding the rope, the horse trotting behind him, rode

432

fifty yards up through the trees. At the edge of the trees he looked
down the road past the truck to the bridge. He could see men out
on the bridge and behind it looked like a traffic jam on the road.
Robert Jordan looked around, saw what he wanted finally, and
reached up and broke a dead limb from a pine tree. He dropped
the hackamore, edged the pack-horse up to the slope that slanted
down to the road and then hit him hard across the rump with the
tree branch. ‘Go on, you son of a bitch,’ he said, and threw’ the
dead branch after him as the pack-horse crossed the road and
started across the slope. The branch hit him and the horse broke
from a run into a gallop.

Robert Jordan rode thirty yards farther up the road; beyond
that the bank was too steep. The gun was firing now with the
rocket whisht and the cracking, dirt-spouting boom. “Come on,
you big grey fascist bastard,’ Robert Jordan said to the horse and
put him down the slope in a sliding plunge. Then he was q§it in
the open, over the road that was so hard under the hoofs he felt
the pound of it come up all the way to his shoulders, his neck and
his teeth, on to the smooth of the slope, the hoofs finding it, cut-
ting it, pounding it, reaching, throwing, going, and he looked
down across the slope to where the bridge showed now at a new
angle he had never seen. It crossed in profile now without fore-
shortening and in the centre was the broker* place and behind it
on the road was the little tank and behind the little tank was a
big tank with a gun that flashed now yellow-bright as a mirror
and the screech as the air ripped apart seemed almost over the
grey neck that stretched ahead of him, and he turned his head as
the dirt fountained up the hillside. The pack-horse was ahead of
him swinging too far to the right and slowing down and Robert
Jordan, galloping, his head turned a little toward the bridge, saw
the line of trucks halted behind -the turn that showed now clearly
as he was gaining height, and he saw the bright yellow flash that
signalled the instant whish and boom, and the shell fell short,
but he heard the metal sailing from where the dirt rose.

He saw them all ahead in the edge of the timber watching him
and he said, %'Arre caballol Go on, horse P and felt his big horse’s
chest surging with the steepening of the slope and saw the grey
neck stretching and the grey ears ahead and he reached and
patted the wet grey neck, and he looked back at the bridge and
saw the bright flash from the heavy, squat, mud-coloured tank

433

there on the road and then he did not hear any whish but only a
banging acrid smelling clang like a boiler being ripped apart and
he was under the grey horse and the grey horse was kicking and
he w r as trying to pull out from under the weight.

He could move all right. He could move toward the right. But
his left leg stayed perfectly flat under the horse as he moved to
the right. It was as though there was a new joint in it; not the hip
joint but another one that went sideways like a hinge. Then he
knew what it was all right and just then the grey horse-knee-ed
himself up and Robert Jordan’s right leg, that had kicked the
stirrup loose just as it should, slipped clear over the saddle, and
came down beside him and he felt with his two hands of his
thigh bone where the left leg lay flat against the ground and his
hands both felt the sharp bone and where it pressed against the
skin.

'Jhe grey horse was standing almost over him and he could see
his ribs heaving. The grass was green where he sat and there were
meadovy flowers in it and he looked down the slope across to the
road and the bridge and the gorge and the road and saw the tank
and waited for the next flash. It came almost at once with again
no whish and in the burst of It, with the smell of the high ex-
plosive, the dirt clods scattering and the steel whirring off, he saw
the big grey horse sit quietly down beside him as though it were
a horse in a circus. And then, looking at the horse sitting there, he
heard the sound the horse was making.

Then Primitivo and Agustm had him under the arm-pits and
were dragging him up the last of the slope and the new joint in
his leg let it swing any way the ground swung it. Once a shell
whished close over them and they dropped him and fell flat, but
the dirt scattered over them and the metal sung off and they
picked him up again. And then they had him up to the shelter of
the long draw in the trees where the horses were, and Maria,
Pilar, and Pablo were standing over him.

Maria was kneeling by him and saying, ‘Roberto, what hast
thou?’ *

He said, sweating heavily, ‘The left leg is broken, guapa. 1

‘We will bind it up,’ Pilar said. ‘Thou canst ride that.’ She
pointed to one of the horses that was packed. ‘Cut off the load.’

Robert Jordan saw Pablo shake his head and he nodded at him.

‘Get along,’ he said. Then he said, ‘Listen, Pablo. Come here.’

434

The sweat-streaked, bristly face bent down by him and Robert
Jordan smelt the full smell of Pablo.

'Let us speak/ he said to Pilar and Maria. ‘I have to speak to
Pablo.’

‘Does it hurt much?’ Pablo asked. He was bending close over
Robert Jordan.

‘No. I think the nerve is crushed. Listen. Get along, I am
mucked, see? I will talk to the girl for a moment. When I say to
take her, take her. She will want to stay. I will only speak to her
for a moment/

‘Clearly, there is not much time/ Pablo said.

‘Clearly/

‘I think you would do better in the Republic/ Robert Jordan
said.

‘Nay, I am for Gredos/

‘Use thy head/

‘Talk to her now/ Pablo said. ‘There is little time. I am sorry
thou hast this, Ingles . ’

‘Since I have it — * Robert Jordan said. ‘Let us not speak of it.
But use thy head. Thou hast much head. Use it.’

‘Why would I not?’ said Pablo. ‘Talk now fast, Ingles. There
is no time.’

Pablo went over to the nearest tree and watched down the slope,
across the slope, and up the road across the gorge. Pablo was
looking at the grey horse on the slope with true regret on his face
and Pilar and Maria were with Robert Jordan where he sat
against the tree trunk.

‘Slit the trouser, will thee?’ he said to Pilar. Maria crouched by
him and did not speak. The sun was on her hair and her face was
twisted as a child’s contorts before it cries. But she was not crying.

Pilar took her knife and slit his trouser leg down below the left-
hand pocket. Robert Jordan spread the cloth with his hands and
looked^ at the stretch of his thigh. Ten inches below the hip joint
^ there was a pointed, purple swelling like a sharp-peaked little tent
and as he touched it with his fingers he could feel the snapped-off
thigh bone tight against the skin. His leg was lying at an odd
angle. He looked up at Pilar. Her face had the same expression as
Maria’s.

'Anda? he said to her. ‘Go/

She went away with her head down without saying anything

435

nor looking back and Robert Jordan could see her shoulders
shaking.

4 Guapa / he said to Maria and took hold of her two hands.
‘Listen. We will not be going to Madrid — ’

Then she started to cry.

‘No, guapa y don’t/ he said. ‘Listen. We will not go to Madrid
now but I go always with thee wherever thou goest. Understand?’

She said nothing and pushed her head against his cheek with
her arms around him.

‘Listen to this well, rabbit/ he said. He knew there was a great
hurry and he was sweating very much, but this had to be said
and understood. ‘Thou wilt go now, rabbit. But I go with thee.
As long as there is one of us there is both of us. Do you under-
stand?’

‘Nay, I stay with thee.*

*Nay, rabbit. What I do now I do alone. I could not do it well
with thee. If thou goest then I go, too. Do you not see how it is?
Whichever one there is, is both.’

‘I will stay with thee.’

‘Nay, rabbit. Listen. That people cannot do together. Each one
must do it alone. But if thou goest then I go with thee. It is in
that way that I go too. Thou wilt go now, I know. For thou art
good and kind. Thou wilt go now for us both.’

‘But it is easier if I stay with thee/ she said. ‘It is better for
me.’

‘Yes. Therefore go for a favour. Do it for me since it is what
thou canst do,’

‘But you don’t understand, Roberto. What about me ? It is
worse for me to go.’

‘Surely/ he said. ‘It is harder for thee. But I am thee also now.’

She said nothing.

He looked at her and he was sweating heavily and he spoke
now, trying harder to do something than he had ever tried in all
his life.

‘Now you will go for us both/ he said. ‘You must not be
selfish, rabbit. You must do your duty now.’

She shook her head.

‘You are me now/ he said. ‘Surely thou must feel it, rabbit.
Rabbit, listen/ he said. ‘Truly thus I go too. I swear it to thee/

She said nothing.

436

‘Now you see it/ he said. ‘Now I sec it Is clear. Now thou wilt
go. Good. Now you are going. Now you have said you will god
She had said nothing.

‘Now I thank thee for it. Now’ you are going well and fast and
far and we both go in thee. Now’ put thy hand here. Now put thy
head down. Nay, put it down. That is right. Now I put my hand
there. Good. Thou art so good. Now’ do not think more. Now
art thou doing w’hat thou should. Now’ thou art obeying. Not me
but us both. The me in thee. Now you go for us both. Truly. We
both go in thee now. This I hate promised thee. Thou art very
good to go and very kind.’

He jerked his head at Pablo, who was halt-looking at him from
the tree and Pablo started over. He motioned with his thumb to
Pilar.

‘We will go to Madrid another time, rabbit,' he said. "Truly.
Now stand up and go and w r e both go. Stand up. Seer'

‘No/ she said and held him tight around the neck.

He spoke now still calmly and reasonably but with great
authority.

‘Stand up,’ he said. ‘Thou art me too now r . Thou art all there
will be of me. Stand up.’

She stood up slowly, crying, and with her head down. Then
she dropped quickly beside him and then stood up again, slowly
and tiredly, as he said, ‘Stand up, guapa /

Pilar was holding her by the arm and she W’as standing there.

‘ Vdmonos / Pilar said. ‘Dost lack anything, Ingles:* She looked
at him and shook her head.

‘No,’ he said and went on talking to Maria.

‘There is no good-bye, guapa , because we are not apart. That
it should be good in the Gredos. Go now. Go good. Nay,’ he
spoke now still calmly and reasonably as Pilar walked the girl
along. ‘Do not turn around. Put thy foot in. Yes. Thy foot in.
Help her up,’ he said to Pilar. ‘Get her in the saddle. Swung up
now.’

He turned his head, sweating, and looked down the slope, then
back toward where the girl was in the saddle with Pilar by her
and Pablo just behind. ‘Now go,’ he said. ‘Go.’

She started to look around. ‘Don’t look around/ Robert Jordan
t said. ‘Go.’ And Pablo hit the horse across the crupper with a hob-
bling strap and it looked as though Maria tried to slip from the

437

saddle but Pilar and Pablo were riding close up against her and
Pilar was holding her and the three horses were going up the
draw.

‘Roberto/ Maria turned and shouted. ‘Let me stay ! Let me
stay P

‘I am with thee/ Robert Jordan shouted. ‘I am with thee now.
We are both there. GoP Then they were out o£ sight around
the corner of the draw and he was soaking wet with sweat and
looking at nothing.

Agustin was standing by him.

‘Do you want me to shoot thee, Ingles ?’ he asked, leaning down
close. * iQuiere s? It is nothing/

l No hace falta / Robert Jordan said. ‘Get along. I am very well
here/

‘ jMe cago en la leche que me han dado? Agustin said. He was
crying so he could not see Robert Jordan clearly. ‘ Salud , Ingles /

'Salud , old one/ Robert Jordan said. He was looking down the
slope now. ‘Look well after the cropped head, wilt thou?’

‘There is no problem/ Agustin said. ‘Thou hast what thou
needest?’

‘There are very few shells for this maquina , so I will keep it/
Robert Jordan said. ‘Thou canst not get more. For that other and
the one of Pablo, yes/

‘I cleaned out the barrel/ Agustin said. ‘Where thou plugged it
in the dirt with the fall/

‘What became of the pack-horse?’

‘The gipsy caught it.’

Agustin was on the horse now but he did not want to go. He
leaned far over toward the tree where Robert Jordan lay.

‘Go on, viejo / RoL t Jordan said to him. ‘In war there are
many things like this/

c Que puta es la guerra / Agustin said. ‘War is a bitchery/

‘Yes, man, yes. But get on with thee/

'Salud, Ingles / Agustin said, clenching his right fist,

‘ Salud / Robert Jordan said. ‘But get along, man/

Agustin wheeled his horse and brought his right fist down as
though he cursed again with the motion of it and rode up the
draw. All the others had been out of sight long before. He looked
back where the draw turned in the trees and waved his fist.
Robert Jordan waved and then Agustin, too, was out of sight

438

. . . Robert Jordan looked down the green slope of the hillside to
the road and the bridge. I’m as well this wa\ as any. he thought,
it wouldn’t be wmrth risking getting over on my belly yet, not as
close as that thing was to the surface and I can see better this way.

He felt empty and drained and exhausted from all of it and
from them going and his mouth tasted of bile. Now, finally and at
last, there was no problem. However all of it had been and how-
ever all of it would ever be now, for him, no longer was there anv
problem.

They were all gone now and he was alone with his back against
a tree. He looked down across the green slope, seeing the grey
horse where Agustin had shot him, and on down the slope to the
road with the timber-covered country behind it. Then he looked
at the bridge and across the bridge and watched the acth iry on the
bridge and the road. He could see the trucks now. all down the
lower road. The grey of the trucks showed through the trees.
Then he looked back up the road to where it came down over the
hill. They will be coming soon now, he thought.

Pilar will take care of her as well as anyone can. You know that.
Pablo must have a sound plan or he would not have tried it. You
do not have to worry about Pablo. It does no good to think about
Maria. Try to believe what you told her. That is the best. And
who says it is not true? Not you. You don’t say it, any more than
you would say the things did not happen that happened. Stay with
what you believe now. Don’t get cynical. The time is too short
and you have just sent her away. Each one does what he can. You
can do nothing for yourself but perhaps you can do something for
another. Well, we had all our luck in four days. Not four days. It
was afternoon when I first got there and it will not be noon to-
day. That makes not quite three days trhd three nights. Keep it
accurate, he said. Quite accurate.

I think you better get down now, he thought. You’d better get
fixed around some way where you will be useful instead of lean-
ing against this tree like a tramp. You have had much luck. There
are many worse things than this. Everyone has to do this, one day
or another. You are not afraid of it once you know you have to do
it, are you? No, he said, truly. It was lucky the nerve was crushed,
though. I cannot even feel that there is anything below the break.
He touched the lower part of his leg and'it was as though it were
not part of his body.

439

He looked down the hill slope again and he thought. I hate to
leave it, that is all. I hate to leave it very much and I hope I have
done some good in it. I have tried to with what talent I had. Have,
you mean . All right, have .

I have fought for what I believed in for a year now. If we win
here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth
the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. And you had a
lot of luck, he told himself, to have had such a good life. You’ve
had just as good a life as grandfather’s though not as long. You’ve
had as good a life as anyone because of these last days. You do not
want to complain when you have been so lucky. I wish there was
some way to pass on what I’ve learned, though. Christ, I was
learning fast there at the end. I’d like to talk to Karkov. That is
in Madrid. Just over the hills there, and down across the plain.
Down out of the grey rocks and the pines, the heather and the
gorse, across the yellow high plateau you see it rising white and
beautiful. That part is just as true as Pilar’s old women drinking
the blood down at the slaughterhouse. There’s no one thing that’s
true. It’s all true. The way the planes are beautiful whether they
are ours or theirs. The hell they are, he thought.

You take it easy, now, he said. Get turned over now while you
still have time. Listen, one thing. Do you remember? Pilar and
the hand? Do you believe that crap? No, he said. Not with every-
thing that’s happened? No, I don’t believe it. She was nice about
it early this morning before the show started. She was afraid
maybe I believed it. I don’t, though. But she does. They see some-
thing. Or they feel something. Like a sporting dog. What about
extrasensory perception? What about obscenity? he said. She
wouldn’t say good-bye, he thought, because she knew if she did
Maria would never go. That Pilar. Get yourself turned over, Jor-
dan. But he was reluctant to try it.

Then he remembered that he had the small flask in his hip
pocket and he thought. I’ll take a good spot of the giant killer and
then I’ll try it. But the flask was not there when he felt for it.
Then he felt that much more alone because he knew there was
not going to be even that. I guess I’d counted on that, he said.

Do you suppose Pablo took it? Don’t be silly. You must have
lost it at the bridge. ‘Come on now, Jordan,’ he said. ‘Over you go.’

Then he took hold of his left leg with both hands and pulled on
it hard, pulling toward the foot while he lay down beside the tree
440

he had been resting his back against. Then lying fiat and pulling
hard on the leg, so the broken end of the bone would not come
up and cut through the thigh, he turned slowly around on his
rump until the back of his head was facing downhill Then with
his broken leg, held by both hands, uphill, he put the sole of his
right foot against the instep of his left foot and pressed hard while
he rolled, sweating, over on to his face and chest. He got on to his
elbows, stretched the left leg well behind him with both hands
and a far, sweating, push with the right foot and there he was. He
felt with his fingers on the left thigh and it was all right. The bone
end had not punctured the skin and the broken end was well into
the muscle now.

The big nerve must have been truly smashed when that damned
horse rolled on it, he thought. It truly doesn’t hurt at all. Except
now in certain changes of positions. That’s when the bone pinches
something else. You seer he said. You see what luck is? You
didn’t need the giant killer at all.

He reached over for the sub-machine gun, took the clip out that
was in the magazine, felt in his pocket for clips, opened the action
and looked through the barrel, put the clip back into the groove
of the magazine until it clicked, and then looked down the hill
slope. Maybe half an hour, he thought. Now take it easy.

Then he looked at the hillside and he looked at the pines and
he tried not to think at all.

He looked at the stream and he remembered how it had been
under the bridge in the cool of the shadow. I wish they would
come, he thought. I do not want to get in any sort of mixed-up
state before they come.

Who do you suppose has it easier? Ones with religion or just
taking it straight? It comforts them very much but we know there
is nothing to fear. It is only missing it that’s bad. Dying is only
bad when it takes a long time and hurts so much that it humiliates
you. That is where you have all the luck, see? You don’t have any
of that.

It’s wonderful they’ve got away. I don’t mind this at all now
they are away. It is sort of the way I said it. It is really very much
that way. Look how different it would be if they were all scattered
out across that hill where that grey horse is. Or if we were all
cooped up here waiting for it. No. They’re gone. They’re away.
Now if the attack were only a success. What do you want? Every-
441

thing. I want everything and I will take whatever I get. If this
attack is no good another one will be. I never noticed when the
planes came back. God , that was luc\y 1 could ma\e her go.

Fd like to tell grandfather about this one. I’ll bet he never had
to go over and find his people and do a show like this. How do
you know? He may have done fifty. No, he said. Be accurate.
Nobody did any fifty like this one. Nobody did five. Nobody did
one maybe not just like this. Sure. They must have.

I wish they would come now, he said. I wish they would come
right now because the leg is starting to hurt now. It must be the
swelling.

We were going awfully good when that thing hit us, he
thought. But it was only luck it didn’t come while I was under
the bridge .When a thing is wrong something’s bound to happen.
You were bitched when they gave Golz those orders. That was
what you knew and it was probably that which Pilar felt. But
later on we will have these things much better organized. We
ought to have portable short-wave transmitters. Yes, there's a lot
of things we ought to have , I ought to carry a spare leg, too.

He grinned at that sweatily because the leg, where the big
nerve had been bruised by the fall, was hurting badly now. Oh,
let them come, he said. I don’t want to do that business that my
father did. I will do it all right but I’d much prefer not to have to.
I’m against that. Don’t think about that. Don’t think at all. I
wish the bastards would come, he said. I wish so very much they’d
come.

His leg was hurting very badly now. The pain had started sud-
denly with the swelling after he had moved and he said, Maybe
111 just do it now. I guess I’m not awfully good at pain. Listen, if
I do that now you wouldn’t misunderstand, would you? Who are
you talking to? Nobody, he said. Grandfather, I guess. No. No-
body. Oh bloody it, I wish that they would come.

Listen, I may have to do that because if I pass out or anything
like that I am no good at all and if they bring me to they will ask
me a lot of questions and do things and all and that is no good.
It’s much best not to have them do those things. So why wouldn’t
it be all right to just do it now and then the whole thing would be
over with? Because, oh, listen, yes, listen, let them come now .

You’re not so good at this, Jordan, he said. Not so good at this.
And who is so good at this? I don’t know and I don’t really care

442

right now. But you are not. That’s right. You’re not at all. Oh
not at all, at all. 1 think it would be all right to do it now 3 Don’t
you?

No, it isn’t. Because there is something vou can do vet. A a long
as you know what it is you have to do it. As long as you remember
what it is you have to wait for that. Come on. Let them come . Let
them come. Let them come!

Think about them being away, he said. Think about them
going through the wood. Think about them crossing a creek.
Think about them riding through the heather. Think about them
going up the slope. Think about them O.K. to-night. Think about
them travelling, all night. Think about them hiding up to-mor-
row. Think about them. God damn it, think about them. That's
just as jar as 1 can thin\ about them , he said.

Think about Montana. 1 cant. Think about Madrid. / cant .
Think about a cool drink of water. All right. That’s what it will
be like. Like a cool drink of water. You're a liar . It will just be
nothing. That’s all it will be. Just nothing. Then do it. Do it. Do
it now. It’s all right to do it now. Go on and do it now. No, you
have to wait. What for? You know all right. Then wait.

I can’t wait any longer now, he said. If I wait any longer I’ll
pass out. I know because I’ve felt it starting to go three times now
and I’ve held it. I held it all right. But I don’t know about any
more. What I think is you’ve got an internal haemorrhage there
from where that thigh bone’s cut around inside. Especially on
that turning business. That makes the swelling and that’s what
weakens you and makes you start to pass. It would be all right to
do it now. Really. I’m telling you that it would be all right.

And if you wait and hold them up even a little while or just get
the officer that may ma\e all the difference. One thing well done
can ma\e —

All right, he said. And he lay very quietly and tried to hold on
to himself that he felt slipping away from himself as you feel snow
starting to slip sometimes on a mountain slope, and he said, now
quietly, then let me last until they come.

Robert Jordan’s luck held very good because he saw, just then,
the cavalry ride out of the timber and cross the road. He watched
them coming riding up the slope. He saw the trooper who stopped
by the grey horse and shouted to the officer who rode over to him.
* He watched them both looking down at the grey horse. They

443

recognized him of course. He and his rider had been missing
since the early morning of the day before.

Robert Jordan saw them there on the slope, close to him now,
and below he saw the road and the bridge and the long lines ot
vehicles below it. He was completely integrated now and he took
a good long look at everything. Then he looked up at the sky.
There were big white clouds in it. He touched the palm of his
hand against the pine needles where he lay and he touched the
bark of the pine trunk that he lay behind.

Then he rested as easily as he could with his two elbows in the
pine needles and the muzzle of the sub-machine gun resting
against the trunk of the pine tree.

As the officer came trotting now on the trail of the horses of
the band he would pass twenty yards below where Robert Jordan
lay. At that distance there would be no problem. The officer was
Lieutenant Berrendo. He had come up from La Granja when
they had been ordered up after the first report of the attack on the
lower post. They had ridden hard and had then had to swing
back, because the bridge had been blown, to cross the gorge high
above and come around through the timber. Their horses were
wet and blown and they had to be urged into the trot.

Lieutenant Berrendo, watching the trail, came riding up, his
thin face serious and grave. His sub-machine gun lay across his
saddle in the crook of his left arm. Robert Jordan lay behind the
tree, holding on to himself very carefully and delicately to keep
his hands steady. He was waiting until the officer reached the sun-
lit place where the first trees of the pine forest joined the green
slope of the meadow. He could feel his heart beating against the
pine needle floor of the forest.

444

Some other Penguin hoo^s
are described on the
remaining pages

OTHER PENGUINS BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY

A FAREWELL TO ARMS

First published in 1929, this is the famous story of an American
ambulance officer serving with the Italian Arditi in the 1914-18
War. The hero’s bitter feelings about the fighting are contrasted
with his love for the woman who bears his child.

‘It is a masterpiece of imaginative omissions, and the end is quite
unforgettable in its pathos’ - Daily Telegraph (2)

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
A Penguin Modern Classic

‘Three sections in the life of Harry Morgan, a Key West character
who makes a living by rum-running, gun-running, and man-
running between Florida and Cuba. This active passionate life
on the verge of the tropics is perfect material for the Hemingway
style’ - New Statesman (1065)

MEN WITHOUT WOMEN

A collection of stories illustrating Hemingway’s interest* in the
fighting side of man’s nature. He describes with masterly pre-
cision and economy the world of the boxer, the bull-fighter, and
the soldier.

‘He is an excellent story-teller, intense and skilful in planning and
bringing off his effects’ - Daily Telegraph (1067)

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO
and Other Stories
A Penguin Modern Classic

‘Unforgettable reporting of the world in which blood is the argu-
ment . . . they are stamped with the urgency of Mr Hemingway’s
style. That style, at its best, is a superb vehicle for revealing
tenderness beneath descriptions of brutality’ - Ivor Brown in the
Guardian (1882)